Biodiesel Crude Glycerin Fraction Separations with an Emphasis on Methanol Recovery

摘要

The University of Arizona Biodiesel Pilot Plant aims to convert waste cooking oiludfrom restaurants located at the university’s student unions into biodiesel to fuel campus vehicles.udWith the help of the project’s community industrial partner, Grecycle, students from a variety ofudmajors have constructed a 100-gallon single reactor plant and quality-testing laboratory. Theudwaste cooking oil is collected from student unions, filtered, and deposited at the plant. Fromudthere, students use chemical processes to convert the waste oil into biodiesel meeting theudAmerican Society for Testing and Material’s quality standards. Our project intends to optimizeudthe separations of the liquid byproduct stream by more efficiently recovering methanol forudrecycling, as well as separating water and glycerin, thus creating higher purity, more valuableudproducts. Both Aspen and ChemCAD will be utilized to simulate a divided wall columnudseparations method for this process at the pilot scale, and a full process design will be providedudas a template for future pilot and large scale biodiesel operations.