Engineering Commons^™

Catalytic Synthesis Of Biodiesel Fuel Under Sub/Supercritical Conditions: Kinetics And Phase Behavior, Jiuxu Liu

Dissertations - ALL

In this thesis, transesterification of triglycerides and esterification of free fatty acids were executed under subcritical and supercritical alcohol conditions, and discussed in Chapter 2-5. The project was initiated by studying the phase behavior and kinetics of transesterification reactions under severe reaction conditions (T: 300-400 oC, P=200 bar), since those conditions were suggested and commonly used in the literature. At these conditions, triglycerides reacted with alcohol within minutes, and the oil-alcohol mixture formed a homogeneous phase which minimized the boundary mass transfer resistance. The composition change of the reaction mixture made the critical point of the system approach supercritical region …

An Experimental Study On Thermal Stability Of Faee Biodiesel Fuel With Ethanol, Yujie Shen

Dissertations - ALL

Biodiesel fuel is usually synthesized from vegetable oil and animal fat, and now it has been widely used in tractors, trucks, buses and ships. Unlike traditional fossil fuels, biodiesel is more environment-friendly and it is renewable, which can help people solve the energy crisis to some extent.

Nowadays, supercritical esterification has become a novel way to produce biodiesel, but high temperature may cause the decomposition of biodiesel. Researchers mainly focus on studying the properties of fatty acid methyl ester (FAME), however, fatty acid ethyl ester (FAEE) biodiesel has only been slightly explored. So in this study, ethanol was used to …

An Experimental Study On Thermal Stability Of Biodiesel Fuel, Yiying Zhu

Biomedical and Chemical Engineering – Theses

Biodiesel fuel, as renewable energy, has been used in conventional diesel engines in pure form or as biodiesel/diesel blends for many years. However, thermal stability of biodiesel and biodiesel/diesel blends has been minimally explored. Aimed to shorten this gap, thermal stability of biodiesel is investigated at high temperatures.

In this study, batch thermal stressing experiments of biodiesel fuel were performed in stainless steel coils at specific temperature and residence time range from 250 to 425 °C and 3 to 63 minutes, respectively.

Evidence of different pathways of biodiesel fuel degradation is demonstrated chromatographically. It was found that biodiesel was stable …