Synthesis Of Epoxidized Methyl Oleate In Microreactor

As renewable base oil to replace the mineral based lubricant, transformed vegetable oil brings hope for defusing critical crisis faced by the energy and environment. Microreactor is a new type of reactor with enhanced mass transfer and heat transfer, in contrast to conventional rector. It has many advantages and has been widely used in the research and chemical industrial process in recent years. In this paper, a homemade microreactor was used for epoxy modifying of vegetable oil. The factors affecting the continuous production of lubricant based oil were studied. Then the liquid-liquid two phase mass transfer in a microchannel was studied.The difference of cross flow and convection flow on the epoxidation reaction was compared in the home made microreactor. The influences of amount of stabilizer EDTA-2Na, catalyst,reaction temperature, HCOOH, as well as residence time on the epoxidation rate of the product were measured. With an orthogonal experimental method, the optimum conditions were observed as follows: the amount of stabilizer 2%, catalyst 4%,reaction temperature 70℃, n(C=C): n(HCOOH):n(H2O2)=1:9:9, residence time 17 min. under the optimal epoxidation conditions, iodine value of the product was 8.7gI2/100 g, acid value was 0.29mgKOH/g, and the epoxidation ratio was up to 81.62%.The whole process of droplet formation in the T-junction microchannel with cross flow was observed. The results showed that the whole formation process can be divided into three phases: droplet growth, droplet pinch off by continuous phase and droplet breakup from dispersed phase. In addition, the droplet size and distribution were investigated, and the interfacial area was calculated accordingly. Water-succinic acid-n-butanol was chosen for the working system, the influences of the total flow velocity, flow ratio, succinic acid concentration on the extraction efficiency and the volumetric mass transfer coefficient were investigated. The droplet was decreased with the increase of flow ratio, and the droplet dispersed evently, besides, the interfacial area was decreased with the increase of flow ratio. The liquid-liquid two phase flow has efficient extraction efficiency which came up to 79.4%.