Intensification of Biodiesel Processing from Waste Cooking Oil, Exploiting Cooperative Microbubble and Bifunctional Metallic Heterogeneous Catalysis

Javed, Fahed; Rizwan, Muhammad; Asif, Maryam; Ali, Shahzad; Aslam, Rabya; Akram, Muhammad Sarfraz; Zimmerman, William B.; Rehman, Fahad

doi:10.3390/bioengineering9100533

Cited by 6 publications

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“…As the bubble rises, the alcohol is transferred into the MO. As the temperature of the reactor is maintained higher than the boiling point of MeOH, it does not condenses in the reactor and leaves as vapor [ 24 ]. The vapors of MeOH can be collected, condensed and recycled to improve the process economics.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this context, Fahed et al (2021) validated the effectiveness of microbubble technology in an unrefined feedstock (chicken fat oil) and showed an overall process conversion of 89.90% in 30 min [ 18 ]. To further investigate the effect of microbubble technology, Fahed et al (2022) investigated the effect of microbubble technology by integrating microbubble technology with heterogeneous catalyst using waste cooking oil to further increase the rate of reaction and achieved an 85% conversion in 20 min [ 24 ]. The higher conversion was achieved for both chicken fat oil and waste cooking oil in a shorter period of time, indicating that microbubble technology is an economical method for biodiesel production.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Kinetics of Biodiesel Production from Microalgae Using Microbubble Interfacial Technology

et al. 2022

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As an alternative to fossil fuels, biodiesel can be a source of clean and environmentally friendly energy source. However, its commercial application is limited by expensive feedstock and the slow nature of the pretreatment step-acid catalysis. The conventional approach to carry out this reaction uses stirred tank reactors. Recently, the lab-scale experiments using microbubble mediated mass transfer technology have demonstrated its potential use at commercial scale. However, all the studies conducted so far have been at a lab scale ~ 100 mL of feedstock. To analyze the feasibility of microbubble technology, a larger pilot scale study is required. In this context, a kinetic study of microbubble technology at an intermediate scale is conducted (3 L of oil). Owing to the target for industrial application of the process, a commercial feedstock (Spirulina), microalgae oil (MO) and a commercial catalyst para-toluene sulfonic acid (PTSA) are used. Experiments to characterize the kinetics space (response surface, RSM) required for up-scaling are designed to develop a robust model. The model is compared with that developed by the gated recurrent unit (GRU) method. The maximum biodiesel conversion of 99.45 ± 1.3% is achieved by using these conditions: the molar ratio of MO to MeOH of 1:23.73 ratio, time of 60 min, and a catalyst loading of 3.3 wt% MO with an MO volume of 3 L. Furthermore, predicted models of RSM and GRU show proper fits to the experimental result. It was found that GRU produced a more accurate and robust model with correlation coefficient R2 = 0.9999 and root-mean-squared error (RSME) = 0.0515 in comparison with RSM model with R2 = 0.9844 and RMSE = 3.0832, respectively. Although RSM and GRU are fully empirical representations, they can be used for reactor up-scaling horizontally with microbubbles if the liquid layer height is held constant while the microbubble injection replicates along the floor of the reactor vessel—maintaining the tessellation pattern of the smaller vessel. This scaling approach maintains the local mixing profile, which is the major uncontrolled variable in conventional stirred tank reactor up-scaling.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%