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Process synthesis of flexible and sustainable processes consisting of membrane separations and reactive distillation for the production of biodiesel
Publikationstyp
Conference Paper
Date Issued
2015-11
Sprache
English
TORE-URI
Start Page
55
End Page
56
Citation
AIChE Annual Meeting (2015)
Contribution to Conference
Scopus ID
Due to global competition and an increasing demand for reduced emissions the development of sustainable and efficient processes based on renewable resources becomes more and more important. Furthermore, the fluctuating qualities of renewable feedstock necessitate highly flexible processes. Fatty esters are promising new building blocks for the chemical industry and can be produced by the transesterification of virgin vegetable oils. However, nowadays fatty esters are mainly used as biodiesel, an alternative fuel in future based on renewable resources [1,2]. Due to the high raw material costs for the virgin vegetal oils [3], no economic production is possible. A promising approach to lower the production costs is the application of cheap low-quality oils, such as waste cooking oil or crude non-edible oil [4,5]. These low quality oils contain a high amount of free fatty acids, which lead to undesired side reactions in the alkaline catalyzed transesterification reaction [6,7]. Consequently, new process concepts are necessary to enable the application of low-quality oils as a feedstock.