Document Type
Article (Restricted)
Publication Date
1-1-2010
Abstract
High quality palm oil biodiesel can be produced by combination of alkali transesterification and separation processes in a TiO2/Al2O3 membrane reactor. Due to the small molecular size, methanol molecules are able to pass through the membrane along with the products. Since methanol is one of the process reactants it is necessary to be recovered. Methanol recovery by means of continuous distillation was employed and the influences of different operational parameters including heating temperature permeate flow rate and reactants ratio were investigated. The results indicate that these parameters have significant effects on the rate of methanol recovery. To simulate the rate of methanol recovery an artificial neural network based approached was employed. The experimental data obtained in this work were used to train and validate the created neural network. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords
Biodiesel, Methanol, Membrane, Palm oil
Divisions
fac_eng
Funders
Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Malaysia and University of Malaya: Science fund (fund number: 13-02-03-3019) and PPP funds (PS-103-2008B and PS-108-2009B)
Publication Title
Separation and Purification Technology
Volume
76
Issue
1
Publisher
Elsevier
Additional Information
Sep. Purif. Technol. ISI Document Delivery No.: 716UV Times Cited: 1 Cited Reference Count: 19 Baroutian, Saeid Aroua, Mohamed K. Raman, Abdul Aziz A. Sulaiman, Nik Meriam N. Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation ; Malaysia and University of Malaya 13-02-03-3019, PS-103-2008B, PS-108-2009B The authors thank Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Malaysia and University of Malaya for their financial supports under the Science fund (fund number: 13-02-03-3019) and PPP funds (PS-103-2008B and PS-108-2009B). ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV AMSTERDAM