Transesterification of Waste Cooking Oil: Kinetic Study and Reactive Flow Analysis

Homogenous catalyst transesterification of biofuel into a biodiesel is a multiple, reversible reactions process. It is steered by several parameters including residence time, the reactants quality, proportions, state of mixing, as well as catalyst amount and temperature. In this work the chemical kinetics of a simple and robust tubular semi-continuous reactor of methoxide and biomass lipid is carried out in the presence of NaOH (sodium hydroxide) homogenous catalyst. The kinetic parameters are evaluated for the mixed waste cooking oil (WCO). Results demonstrated that higher conversion and product yield is achieved at relatively higher temperatures and methanol to triglyceride molar ratios, and longer residence time. The kinetic study is carried out at the optimal conversion metrics. The obtained kinetic data was found to be in line with the published kinetic studies and inferior to published data for virgin oil under the similar process parameters. The evaluated rate constants and their activation energies are implemented in high fidelity reactive flow simulation and resulted in a worthy reaction trend that brought more insight to several reactor and flow parameters.