Research Of Enhancing Transesterification To Produce Biodiesel Under Electric Field

As a clean renewable energy, biodiesel is promising to replace diesel. It is of great strategic significance to develop biodiesel for economic sustainable development and energy substitution promotion as well as environmental pressure reduction. The advantages of electric field on transesterification include consuming lower energy, reducing the reaction and separation time, efficiently promoting the biodiesel yield. Electric field could reduce liquid surface tension and atomization resistance so that the contact area of two phases could be increased significantly. The object of this study was the reaction of base catalyzed transesterification of biodiesel preparation under high elec tric field to explore the breakup mechanisms of alcohol-oil two phases by visualization technique and research a new technology of biodiesel preparation as well as analyze the influence of electric field on transesterification reaction.The charged breakup of liquid-liquid was researched by visualization technique in this article. The experimental materials were soybean oil and ethanol. Based on the high speed micro imaging technology, the ethanol breakup process in oil was studied to capture the micro morp hology characteristics of ethanol breakup under different experimental parameters. The evolution rules of charged breakup models were disguised and charged breakup models of liquid-liquid were analyzed. The experimental results showed that: as the electric field strength increased, the ethanol breakup models experienced in turn single drop model, single drop breakup model, branch breakup model and membrane breakup model, during these models, the droplet sizes decreased gradually. In membrane breakup model, the droplet sizes were very small, achieving well mixing of oil and alcohol, which supplied a reaction environment of accelerating mixing for transesterification reaction.This paper studied the electric field enhanced transesterification reaction and the technology of biodiesel preparation. Two reaction system of transesterification under electric field were built: injection system of point-plan electrode mode and premixed system of spiral electrode mode. Base catalyzed transesterification of biodiesel preparation under high electric field was researched by using these two systems and compared with the traditional base catalyzed transesterification of biodiesel preparation. Three aspects of reaction, process and product were analyzed, the results showed tha t electric field could strengthen disturbance to promote interphase mass transfer and accelerate transesterification process and reduce reaction time. Electric field could also accelerate the separation of biodiesel and by-product glycerol, simplifying the post-processing. By GC-MS test for the product, the content of methyl ester was higher by transesterification under electric field, obtaining higher conversion rate of biodiesel. These experiment researches have very important directive significance for developing a new technology of biodiesel preparation under electric field.