Simulation and optimization of Camelina oil fatty acids reaction to produce fatty acid methyl esters in a reactive distillation reactor

Reactive distillation (RD) is a chemical unit operation in which chemical reaction and product separation occurs simultaneously in one unit resulted in reduce the number of downstream steps, energy savings, and greenhouse gases. In the current work, process flow sheets for industrial routes for conversion of camelina oil fatty acids to fatty acid methyl esters (biodiesel) in presence of acid catalyst is modelled in Aspen HYSYS for the purpose to scale up the esters production. The effect of the operating and design parameters is optimized in addition to design the production plant. The simulation results showed that optimum ester yield is obtained for linoleic acid and palmatic components using 6:1 alcohol to oil ratio, reaction temperature 60°C and feeding the oil and the alcohol at stage number 3 and 5 respectively.