Phase Transfer Of Organic Acids In The Catalytic Esterification Of Diesel And Its Kinetics

Crude oil with high acidity could induce a lot of problems in the process of production, transportation and refining. Hence, how to decrease the acidity of oil has become a widely concerned issue. In our project, three different organic acids are esterified under liquid-liquid phase transfer catalysis condition. The esterification reaction could not only decrease the acidity of oil, but also improve the quality of oil by adding the product ester which acts as an effective additive back into oil.In this thesis, adipic acid, benzoic acid and phthalic acid are chosen as model compounds, and dodecane as solvent. The effect of these four factors:reaction time, reaction temperature, amount of catalyst and water, has been investigated respectively. We design proper four factors three level orthogonal experiments, and there are nine experiments in each orthogonal experiment. The effect of different factors could be evaluated by the range (R) which could calculate from the results of orthogonal experiment. The products are qualitatively and quantitatively characterized by liquid FT-IR and GC. Besides, we study the kinetics of the reaction. The effect of reaction time, amount of water and catalyst, different catalysts and different organic acids to the reaction rate constant kobs are also studied. The reaction order and activation energy are calculated. The results indicate that this kind of phase transfer catalysis reaction is a persudo-first order reaction and the activation energy is about 16kcal/mol.The mechanism of this kind of phase transfer catalysis reaction has been investigated, and the relationship between two processes:mass-transfer process and chemical-controlled process, is also discussed, and the results show that this kind of phase transfer catalysis reaction is chemical-controlled.