Biodiesel Preparation without a Cosolvent in an Opposite-Side Micro-Fixed-Bed Reactor

In the process of preparing biodiesel using microreactors, cosolvents and homogeneous catalysts are generally used, which adds to separation cost. Hence, this study explored use an opposite-side feed micro-fixed-bed reactor with inner diameter 2 mm produce by transesterification soybean oil methanol without any cosolvent, in a fixed solid base acted as catalyst obstacles. A yield 99.4% was achieved when methanol-to-oil molar ratio 12, temperature 70 °C, residence time 8.05 min. mixing conducted for microreactor through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. The results showed that best index could reach 0.94 within 25 (length). Then, kinetics were found be consistent proposed pseudo-homogeneous secondary reaction model. With data mixed-model, predicted. simulated experimental data.