Simulação computacional da produção de biodiesel por hidroesterificação

Abstract

The development of clean energy sources has become a necessity of the utmost importance, because the consequences of global warming intensified in recent years and the inevitable future shortages of fossil fuels. For this reason, the production of biodiesel, a clean fuel that can partially or totally replace diesel oil, has achieved significant prominence. The conventional method of production of this biofuel is discontinuous with basic homogeneous catalysis and requires materials of high quality. The production of biodiesel by reacting hidroesterification from fatty matter without significant restrictions attracts prominent due to a number of advantages that this technique has. This work has as main objective to contribute to this theme, presenting computer simulations of a multi-steps continuous process for producing biodiesel by hidroesterification. For the hydrolysis step we chose the packed bed reactor (PBR) while for the esterification step was made use of the technology of reactive distillation column, the central part of this thesis. The results of sensitivity analysis defined the best conditions for the hydrolysis step that were 80 mol / min of molar flow rate, feed molar ratio between water and triolein to 11:1 at 220 °C with 20g of catalyst in inside the tubular reactor. As for the esterification step, the reactive distillation column simulated in the example that soy hydrolyzed react with ethanol, the optimum conditions were: minimum reflux ratio, reboiler off, 480 K in the feed of soy hydrolyzed, 40g of catalyst in each stage. In the reboiler thermal analysis, the best efficiency generated a reduction in energy consumption along the column, and yet avoids the exposure of biodiesel at high temperatures. With these operating conditions of both steps, up to 99% conversions were obtained, the higher purity of the biodiesel to be marketed under the current legislation in force in Brazil.