Parametric Study on the Reactive Extraction of Rapeseed Oil for Biodiesel Production in a Batch Reactor. Adam Harvey, Rabitah Zakaria School of Chemical Engineering and Advanced Materials, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom. 1. Introduction In the conventional process to make biodiesel, the raw material is oil that has been pre-extracted from the seeds, and usually degummed and refined. However, it has been shown that transesterification of the oil can actually be carried out directly from the plant seeds without prior extraction [1]. In this scheme, macerated seeds are contacted directly with methanol and catalyst to produce biodiesel without the need of other solvents. This route will simplify the overall biodiesel process scheme and has the potential to improve the efficiency of the process as well as to reduce the production cost. Using this technique, the use of hexane to extract the oil can be eliminated as the extraction is being carried out by the reactant it self. This provides an added environmental benefit as hexane is classified as a hazardous air pollutant and contributes to the production of smog and global warming. The overall objective of this research is to develop an integrated technology combining the extraction of vegetable oil from oilseeds with reaction of that oil to biodiesel in a one-step extraction/reaction process. The steps and parameters involved in the integrated extraction/reaction scheme differ from that of the conventional process in many ways. The fact that the reaction system is heterogeneous could alter the kinetics of the transesterification reaction. The mechanism on how the reaction and extraction occurs in the seeds is also not well understood. The parameters that affect extraction such as seeds pretreatment, particle size, moisture level, and solvent amount will also affect the yield of ester. The presence of other compounds in the seeds might also interfere with the transesterification reaction and the final ester and glycerol product might contain compound from the seeds that is soluble in methanol. Hence, the optimum values for methanol/oil molar ratio, catalyst concentration and temperature may differ between conventional transesterification and the combined reaction/extraction scheme. In this study, investigations were carried out to understand the process parameters that affect the efficiency of the in situ process. Specifically, the effect of operating parameters such as molar ratio of alcohol to oil, particulate size, catalyst concentration, and moisture content were investigated.