The ethylene oxide hydration process in a catalytic fixed bed tube reactor was studied. A cross-linked styrene-divinylbenzene anion-exchange resin in the HCO 3 -/CO 3 2--form was used as a catalyst. The deactivation and swelling of the catalyst during the process were detected. The mathematical model of the reactor with determined parameters adequately describing the rate of the reaction, product distribution and catalyst deactivation and swelling has been developed.

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Butyl lactate is a green solvent produced from renewable materials through the reaction of ammonium lactate with n-butanol. It could be a source material for valuable products such as propylene glycol, acrylic acid, its derivatives, and the cyclic monomer of polylactic acid (PLA)—lactate. In this study, we present novel non-catalytic interactions of ammonium lactate and n-butanol carried out in the temperature range of 130–170 °C in a closed system. The study focused on the kinetic modelling of the reaction between ammonium lactate and n-butanol to derive a mathematical model for the reactor unit of butyl lactate synthesis. The aim of this work was to study the kinetics of the interaction between ammonium lactate and n-butanol, as well as to obtain a kinetic model of the process and its parameters. We suggested the chemical transformation routes and determined the kinetic model and parameters that adequately describe the process in a closed system within the studied condition range. The study proposes the first kinetic model that accounts for lactamide formation through two routes. This study showed that the high-temperature non-catalytic interaction of ammonium lactate and n-butanol could be one of the prospective synthesis routes.

It was experimentally established that the dependence of the partial pressure of methanol on the molar fraction of methanol in oil shows a pronounced negative deviation from Raoul’s law, which significantly changes the idea of the influence of a large excess of methanol during non-catalytic synthesis of biodiesel. The efficiency of use of a molar excess of methanol is reduced as it grows, and with a more than 10-fold molar excess of the amount of reacted methanol, is practically constant. The comparison of biodiesel production processes in the range 220–235 °C showed that a slight change in the process temperature more effectively affects the biodiesel yield than an increase in the molar excess of methanol. A mathematical model of the process of transesterification of rapeseed oil in reactors of various types (batch and tubular reactors) is developed. A satisfactory correlation between the experimental and calculated data was observed. The calculation showed that the rate constants of the reverse reactions at 230 °C were not significant.