Synthesis Acetylation of Glycerol Using Batch Reactor and Continuous Reactive Distillation Column

Abstract

Biodiesel production from vegetable oil produces glycerol as by-product with the amount of about 10 wt% of its product. This excessive amount of glycerol needs to be converted into the higher valuable product. One of the prospective glycerol's derivatives is triacetin, a good bio-additive as antiknocking agent. In this work the synthesis of triacetin from glycerol and acetic acid using sulfuric acid catalyst has been performed in batch reactor and reactive distillation continuous process. Triacetin was synthesized using batch reactor to give 96.30% of glycerol conversion. Reactive distillation can be used as a place of reaction and purification products in one place. Reactive distillation can separate water and acetic acid to the reaction of distillate product around 75% of the main product of bottom results. The production using continuous reactive distillation resulted in glycerol conversion of 98.51%.