Modelagem e análise experimental da transesterificação do óleo de soja através de microondas

Abstract

In recent decades, biodiesel production techniques through the transesterification of oils or fats have been intensified. This is due to the increasing demand for energy sources more "clean" (less polluting the environment), such as biodiesel. One of widely used techniques is heating the reaction using a microwave. The use of microwaves has resulted in faster reactions and higher biodiesel conversion. Thus, this work performed experiments using soybean oil as raw material for the production of biodiesel, with ethanol and homogeneous (KOH – Potassium hydroxide) and heterogeneous (ZnAl2O4 – Zinc aluminate) catalyst in batch reactor in a commercial microwave. Through the experiments, and with the aid of Statistica® program and EMSO® simulator, it was possible to assemble the kinetic model batch reactor heated by microwave and analyze what is the best catalyst to be used, which reaction time for production satisfactory biodiesel and wherein the molar ratio between oil and ethanol is suitable for obtaining biodiesel shorter reaction.