An Analysis of Characteristics for the Non-catalytic Esterification of Palm Fatty Acid Distillate (PFAD)

In this work, the reaction characteristics for the non-catalytic esterification of palm fatty acid distillate were analyzed. The esterification reaction was assumed as the pseudo homogeneous 2nd order reversible reaction and 'reaction effectiveness factor (eta)' was used to take accounts into evaporation and reaction of water and methanol, which take place simultaneously in the liquid phase. The nonlinear programming was used to derive appropriate kinetic parameters, the reaction rate constant and mass transfer coefficient, minimizing the error between experimental data and the numerical values. Based on these parameters, the apparent activation energy was calculated to be 43.98 kJ/mol.