Transesterification of palm oil to biodiesel using Brφnsted acidic ionic liquid as high-efficient and eco-friendly catalyst

The transesterification of palm oil and methanol catalyzed by Br?nsted acidic ionic liquids was investigated. Four eco-friendly Br?nsted acidic ionic liquids were prepared and their structures were characterized by NMR, FT-IR and TG–DTG. The results demonstrated that [CyN_(1,1)PrSO_3H][p-TSA] was more efficient than the other ionic liquids and chosen as catalyst for further research. The influences of various reaction parameters on the conversion of palm oil to biodiesel were performed, and the orthogonal test was investigated to seek the optimum reaction conditions, which were illustrated as follows: methanol to oil mole ratio of 24:1, catalyst dosage of 3.0 wt% of oil, reaction temperature of 120 °C, reaction time of 150 min, and the biodiesel yield achieved 98.4%. In addition, kinetic study was established for the conversion process, with activation energy and preexponential factor of 122.93 k J·mol^(-1) and 1.83 × 10^(15), respectively. Meanwhile, seven-time recycling runs of ionic liquid were completed with ignorable loss of its catalyst activity. The refined biodiesel met the biodiesel standard EN 14214.

Stimuli-responsive emulsions:Recent advances and potential applications

Responsive emulsions are the emulsions that can be reversibly switched on-demand between“stable”and“unstable”by environmental stimulus or trigger,which allows a simple and effective adjustment approach to achieve emulsification and demulsification.In recent years,stimuli-responsive emulsions acting as smart soft material are received considerable attention with the advantages of simple manipulation,good reversibility,low cost,easy treatment,and little effect on the system.In this paper,the recent research progress of emulsions that can respond to external stimuli,including pH,light,magnetic field,CO_(2)/N_(2) and dual responsive are reviewed.Also,the potential applications based on responsive emulsion are discussed,such as catalytic reactions,heavy oil recovery,polymer particles synthesis and optical sensor,aiming to summarize the latest achievements and put forward the possible development trends of responsive emulsions.

Optimization and control of a reactive distillation process for the synthesis of dimethyl carbonate

Dimethyl carbonate is an environmentally benign and biodegradable chemical.Based on integration of reactive distillation and pressure-swing distillation technologies,a novel process for synthesis of dimethyl carbonate through transesterification with propylene carbonate and methanol has been developed by Huang et al.In this work,the optimization of this process was performed by minimizing the total TAC.The results show that the optimal design flowsheet can save energy consumption by 18.6% with the propylene carbonate conversion of 99.9%.Then,an effective plant-wide control structure for the process was developed.Dynamic simulation results demonstrate that the temperature/flow rate cascade control plus with simple temperature control can keep not only product purity but also the conversion of the reactant at their desired values in the face of the disturbance in reactant feed flow rate and feed composition.

Reaction kinetics for the heterogeneously resin-catalyzed and homogeneously self-catalyzed esterification of thioglycolic acid with 2-ethyl-1-hexanol

Producing 2-ethyl-1-hexyl thioglycolate(ETE)via esterification reaction with thioglycolic acid(TGA)aqueous solution as raw material by reactive-separation coupling technology is a promising process intensification method.To choose suitable reactive-separation coupling strategy,the kinetic studies of the esterification of TGA with 2-ethyl-1-hexanol(EHL)were carried out in a batch system.The commercial ion exchange resin was employed as an eco-friendly catalyst.The effects of temperature,catalyst concentration and molar ratio were determined.It was interesting to observe that the equilibrium conversion of TGA increased with the increase of catalyst mass fraction due to the adsorption of product water onto resin surface.The activity-based pseudo-homogeneous(PH),Eley-Rideal(ER)and Langmuir-Hinshelwood-Ho ugen-Watson(LHHW)models were used to fit the kinetics data of the resin-catalyzed reaction.The models of ER and LHHW performed better than the PH model.The kinetics of the TGA-self-catalyzed reaction was also determined.An activity-based homogeneous kinetics model could well describe this self-catalyzed reaction.These results would be meaningful to the selection and design of an appropriate reactionseparation strategy for the production of ETE,to realize the process intensification.

Kinetics measurement of ethylene-carbonate synthesis via a fast transesterification by microreactors

High-purity ethylene carbonate(EC)is widely used as battery electrolyte,polycarbonate monomer,organic intermediate,and so on.An economical and sustainable route to synthesize high-purity ethylene carbonate(EC)via the transesterification of dimethyl carbonate(DMC)with ethylene glycol(EG)is provided in this work.However,this reaction is so fast that the reaction kinetics,which is essential for the industrial design,is hard to get by the traditional measuring method.In this work,an easy-to-assemble microreactor was used to precisely determine the reaction kinetics for the fast transesterification of DMC with EG using sodium methoxide as catalyst.The effects of flow rate,microreactor diameter,catalyst concentration,reaction temperature,and reactant molar ratio were investigated.An activity-based pseudohomogeneous kinetic model,which considered the non-ideal properties of reaction system,was established to describe the transesterification of DMC with EG.Detailed kinetics data were collected in the first 5 min.Using these data,the parameters of the kinetic model were correlated with the maximum average error of 11.19%.Using this kinetic model,the kinetic data at different catalyst concentrations and reactant molar ratios were predicted with the maximum average error of 13.68%,suggesting its satisfactory prediction performance.

High-efficiency and safe synthesis of tonalid via two Friedel-Crafts reactions in continuous-flow microreactors

Tonalid,an important fragrance ingredient with widespread applicatio n,was synthesized via two FriedelCrafts reactions,which were catalyzed by AlCl_(3).The traditional tonalid production was conducted in batch stirring tank reactors,suffering from low production capacity and the safety hazard of temperature runaway.To solve these problems,the continuous-flow technologies were developed for the highefficiency and intrinsically safe synthesis of tonalid in microreactors.Catalyst AlCl_(3)was neatly homogenized in proper solvents by forming complex with reactant,which was a necessary step for the continuous synthesis in microreactors.Several reaction conditions,including reactant molar ratio,catalyst concentration,temperature,and microchannel hydrodynamic diameter,were investigated for the two Friedel-Crafts reactions in micro reactors.At optimized conditions,the yields of the two Friedel-Crafts reactions were 44.15%and 97.55%,respectively.In comparison with the batch reactors,the reaction times of these two reactions could both be reduced by nearly two thirds in microreactors at the similar yield.