Asian Journal of Applied Sciences (ISSN: 2321 – 0893) Volume 07 – Issue 03, June 2019 Asian Online Journals (www.ajouronline.com) 303 Application of Reactive Distillation for Biodiesel Production Enhancement: An alkyl process W. Limniyakul 1 , T. R. Srinophakun 2* , and S. Wanganusorn 3 1 Department of Chemical Engineering, Kasetsart University Bangkok 10900, Thailand 2 Department of Chemical Engineering, Kasetsart University Bangkok 10900, Thailand 3 School of Manufacturing Systems and Mechanical Engineering, Sirindhorn International Institute of Technology Thammasat University, Pathum Thani 12120, Thailand * Correspondong author’s email: fengtcs [AT] hotmail.com _________________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT— This article presents a reactive distillation simulation model of biodiesel production from the feed of 1,000 kg/h Jatropha oil. Starting with the verification of the conventional process at the purification sections and improve transesterification calculation, the model gives a realistic solution. GaussViewW and GAUSSIAN 03W are used to generate the molecular structure for other key compositions including triglyceride, diglyceride, and monoglyceride of oleic and linoleic acid which are major components of Jatropha oil. The biodiesel conversion 1.14 % and energy 1.36 %; requirement by the reactive distillation process are higher than the conventional process which the conversion of conventional process and reactive distillation are 98.2 and 99.8 respectively. However, reactive distillation can almost consume the reactant completely. While there are some triolein and diolein in biodiesel from the conventional process, these residues impact on the quality of biodiesel. The recycling system can also reduce fresh methanol by about 81%. The optimum conditions of reactive distillation are 2 stages of the reaction zone, no rectifying section, no stripping section, 5 reflux ratio, and 1 atm. The controllability of the process is studied by varying the feed oil ± 2%. The control structure of the process can handle these disturbances and keep the product at the desired specification. Keywords— biodiesel, reactive distillation, homogeneous catalyst _________________________________________________________________________________ 1. INTRODUCTION The reactive distillation is an operation of which reaction and separation perform in a single unit. There are several advantages such as: (1) it can reduce capital and production costs by combining two sections into one. (2) Removal products can increase the reaction conversion, (3) the heat duty can be reduced by utilizing the heat of reaction, (4) the limitations of azeotropic mixture can be overcome by reaction (Doherty and Buzad, 1992), (5) the recycling costs for excess reactant, which is necessary for a conventional reactor to prevent side reactions and chemical equilibrium limitation, can be reduced. Due to all these reasons, many publications dealing with the simulation and experimental evaluation of reactive distillation have rapidly increased. The biodiesel productions have two main processes; reaction and purifications. Therefore, this project aims to develop the reactive distillation model for biodiesel production instead of the conventional process. Using the reactive distillation can reduce capital investment such as the production of methyl acetate (Siirola, 1995). For the acid catalyst reaction between iso-butene and methanol to form methyl tert-butyl ether, the traditional reactor followed by distillation concept has a complexity inherently because the mixture leaving the reactor forms three boiling azeotropes. (Sundmacher et al., 1995; Doherty and Buzad, 1992) The development and application of the equilibrium stage model for reactive distillation has been described in several types of research (Taylor et al., 1999; Jhon & Lee, 2002; Chen et al., 2003; Pyhalahti, 2005; Alfradique and Castier, 2005; Cheng and Yu, 2005; Katora et al.,2005; Dalaouti and Seferlis, 2006; Venkateswarlu and Kumar, 2006;). The equilibrium stage models (Taylor et al., 1999) are demonstrated for calculates the material balances, vapor-liquid equilibrium equations, mole fraction summations and enthalpy balances (MESH). Cheng and Yu (2005) studied the optimal feed locations of reactive distillation and presented 3 heuristics. The operation pressure in the distillation is carried out at the atmospheric pressure. However, some cases operate at low or high pressure (Doherty and Malone, 2001). The production of biodiesel by reactive distillation was base on alkali catalyst transesterification by Zhang (Zhang et al., 2003).The kinetic models of transesterification reaction available (Freedman et al., 1986; Noureddini and Zhu, 1997; Darnoko and Cheryan, 2000; Foon et al., 2004; Karmee et al., 2004; Vicente et al., 2005; Vicente et al., 2006). Because of the same catalyst selected