A Review of Biodiesel Production Via Reactive Distillation

Abstract— there are two main problems with continued use of fossil fuels, which meat about 80% of the world energy demand today. The first problem is that they are limited in amount and sooner or later will be depleted. The second problem is that fossil fuels are causing serious environmental problems. Since biodiesel is sustainable and combines high performance with environmental benefits it has become increasingly attractive as an alternative fuel. The conventional method for the production of biodiesel has several disadvantages: high alcohol demand due to shift equilibrium toward fatty esters, necessity of catalyst neutralization hence causing salt waste stream, high separation costs of fatty esters products from the reaction mixture, high production costs caused by complex processes including one or two reactors and several separation units. The reactive distillation (RD) process for the production of biodiesel overcomes these disadvantages. This paper attempts to review production of biodiesel by reactive distillation. The effect of various parameters feed ratio, type of applied catalyst, feed temperature, reboiler duty, type of column have also been summarized in this paper.