Reactive distillation, being an intensified process of combining reaction and distillationudin a single vessel, is an ongoing research. This work considered the use of this novel process toudinvestigate how the purity of a fatty acid methyl ester (oleic acid methyl ester – methyl oleate),udwhich is an alternative fuel that has a potential economic bedrock, vary with variations in refluxudratio and reboiler duty with the aid of Aspen Plus model of the process. The column employed inuddeveloping the model of the process was a RadFrac type having 29 stages, which was divided intoudfive sections, namely condenser (top), rectifying, reaction, stripping and reboiler (bottom) sections.udAfter the development, the model was simulated using UNIversal QUAsiChemical modelud(UNIQUAC) base method. In order to investigate the sensitivity of the system, reflux ratio andudreboiler duty were varied from 2.0-5.5 and 1350-1800 W, respectively. The results obtained fromudthe steady-state simulation of the process revealed that the developed Aspen Plus model of theudsystem was table because it was able to converge when simulated. Furthermore, it was discoveredudfrom the sensitivity analysis carried out that a methyl oleate having a mole fraction ofudapproximately 0.7627 could be obtained from the process when the reflux ratio and the reboilerudduty were 2.0 and 1800 W respectively. Also, it was observed that the mole fraction of methyludoleate was sensitive to both reflux ratio and reboiler duty because the variations in them (refluxudratio and reboiler duty) resulted in corresponding variation in the methyl oleate mole fractionudobtained from the system.
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