Transesterification Reaction in a Three-Dimensional Chaotic Mixer-Based Continuous Reactor: Kinetics Study and Optimization.

In this work, a comparative kinetic study of the transesterification reaction of rapeseed oil with methanol was carried out in two reactors: the first was a batch reactor, and the second was a continuous reactor. The operating conditions of the reaction were a molar ratio of 6:1 (methanol to oil) at temperatures of 40, 50, and 60 °C, with 1% of KOH used as a catalyst. The continuous reactor is composed of a chaotic mixer followed by a plug flow reactor to increase the residence time and ensure complete conversion of the reaction. Mixing is provided by the effects of motion inertia created by chaotic advection in the mixer reactor. A scheme of three reversible reactions was used to model the apparent kinetics of the transesterification reaction. The chaotic mixer is used as an intensifier for the transesterification reaction. The results showed that this technology has reduced the apparent activation energies of the reaction. This kinetic model was applied on used cooking oil for validation. The experimental results show good agreement with the kinetic model with a maximum difference (RMSE) egal to 11% between the experimental results and the simulation. The effect of mixing intensity and temperature on the transesterification reaction in the two systems has been studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]