Kulchanat Prasertsit, Sukritthira Ratanawilai and Pawarat Thummasaneh

DOI: 10.14456/sjst-psu.2018.102

pp. 970 - 976

Abstract

To treat high free fatty acid (FFA) feedstock, the reduction of FFA by esterification was investigated in a modified
continuous reactive distillation column. In the study, the molar ratio of ethanol to crude palm oil was 8:1 and the reaction
temperature was 80±5 ^oC with Amberlite-15 catalyst and feed rate of 4.27 ml/min. To study effects of design parameters, effects
of the mass ratio of Amberlite-15 catalyst to activated carbon (from 1.19to 5.26), the initial concentration of FFA in feedstock,
the feed location, the catalyst distribution, and the residence time were examined experimentally The Taguchi method and
sensibility analysis showed that residence time had the largest effect on FFA conversion while the initial FFA content and the
amount of catalyst were secondary.

Keywords

• crude palm oil
• esterification
• reactive distillation
• amberlite-15 catalyst
• ethanol