Application of Tin(II) Chloride Catalyst for High FFA Jatropha Oil Esterification in Continuous Reactive Distillation Column

Abstract

The application of heterogeneous solid acid catalysts in biodiesel production has become popular and gained significant attention over the last few years. It is since these types of catalysts hold the benefits in terms of easy separation from the product, reusability of the catalyst, high selectivity of the reaction. They are also considered sustainable and powerful particularly in organic synthesis. This work studied the use of tin(II) chloride as solid Lewis acid catalyst to promote the esterification reaction of high Free Fatty Acid (FFA) jatropha oil in continuous reactive distillation column. To obtain the optimum condition, the influences of reaction time, molar ratio of the reactant, and catalyst were investigated. It was revealed that the optimum condition was achieved at the molar ratio of methanol to FFA at 1:60, catalyst concentration of 5%, and reaction temperature of 60°C with the reaction conversion of 90%. This result was significantly superior to the identical reaction performed using batch reactor. The esterification of high FFA jatropha oil using reactive distillation in the presence of tin(II) chloride provided higher conversion than that of Amberlyst-15 heterogeneous catalyst and was comparable to that of homogenous sulfuric acid catalyst, which showed 30 and 94.71% conversion, respectively. The esterification reaction of high FFA jatropha oil was subsequently followed by transesterification reaction for the completion of the biodiesel production. Transesterification was carried out at 60 °C, molar ratio of methanol to oil of 1:6, NaOH catalyst of 1%, and reaction time of one hour. The jatropha biodiesel product resulted from this two steps process could satisfy the ASTM and Indonesian biodiesel standard in terms of ester content (97.79 %), density, and viscosity.

Kinetics study of Jatropha oil esterification with ethanol in the presence of tin (II) chloride catalyst for biodiesel production

“…Therefore, pretreatment step to reduce the FFA content in the feedstock is necessary. The pretreatment process can be performed through the esterification reaction of FFA using alcohol in the presence of acid catalyst [5]. In this work, esterification reaction of jatropha oil was conducted using ethanol over tin (II) chloride catalyst.…”

Effect of Devices and Driving Pressures on Energy Requirements and Mass Transfer Coefficient on Microalgae Lipid Extraction Assisted by Hydrodynamic Cavitation

“…Non-edible vegetable oil or waste of biomass are preferred to serve as energy resources to avoid this problem (Suganya et al, 2016). Some researchers had investigated some fuels from nonedible and waste renewable resources, for instance: (i) biooil from palm empty fruit branch (EFB) (Sunarno et al, 2018), wood (Chukwuneke et al, 2019), vegetables and fruit waste (Wicakso et al, 2018), frying oils wastes (Soulayman and Ola, 2019) microalgae (Cheng et al, 2019), microalgae residue (Jamilatun et al, 2019); (ii) biodiesel from palm fatty acid distillate (Sawitri et al, 2016), jatropha (Kusumaningtyas et al, 2016), papaya seed (Anwar et al, 2019); (iii) syngas from sugarcane bagasse (Daniyanto et al, 2016).…”

Esterification of Non-edible Oil Mixture in Reactive Distillation Column over Solid Acid Catalyst: Experimental and Simulation Study

“…There are several studies of biodiesel synthesis using nonedible oils, such as jatropha oils, rubber seed oils, used cooking oils, nyamplung (Calophyllum inophyllum L.) seed oils, palm fatty acid distillate, etc. [3][4][5][6][7][8] However, the current studies of biodiesel production are predominated by the application of a single type of oil feed-stocks. For the purpose of feedstock diversification, study on the employment of multiple oil feed-stocks for biodiesel production is essential, thus it should be further investigated.…”

“…On the other hand, jatropha and nyamplung seed oils are among the high FFA nonedible oils which are potential as biodiesel feedstocks. 3,7 Biodiesel production is challenging since the process usually involves a reactor followed by a series of separation equipment, which contributes to the complexity and expensive cost of biodiesel production. This challenge can be overcome by the application of multi-functional reactors such as reactive distillation (RD).…”

“…Biodiesel is produced through a chemical process by converting vegetable oils/animal fats into fatty acid methyl esters (FAME). 3 In general, FAME (biodiesel) can be synthesised via two distinctive routes, i.e., (1) one-step process of alkaline-catalysed transesterification reaction of low FFA vegetable oils/fats using short-chain alcohols; or (2) two-step process of acidcatalysed esterification of high FFA vegetable oils/fats using short-chain alcohols followed by transesterification of triglycerides of the oils/fats. 4 Esterification reaction is a pre-treatment to reduce the FFA content by converting it into FAME.…”