Continuous Esterification of Soybean Oleic Acid under Pressure and Its Kinetics

There are varieties of technologies for fatty acid methyl ester's preparation,most of which using the method of transesterification,which need more mole ratio of methanol to oleic acid and longer reaction time.The methyl oleate was synthesized continuously in a tubular fixed-bed reactor with catalyst produced by researchers,and the methanol and oleic acid were esterified directly,which makes the process easily.The optimal esterification conditions were temperature 100℃,pressure 0.35 MPa,reactor time 2.5 h,the mole ratio of methanol to oleic acid 2∶1.Under such conditions,the conversion reached 93.1% in a single-stage.Compared with the traditional process,this technique significantly reduced the amount of the methanol,shorten the reaction time and reduced energy consumption.The macrokinietic equation for the esterification was established base on the least square method and experiment data.The results showed that the data appear to be fit to the second-order kinetic equation.