Maytinee Obpirompu. Purification of glycerol from biodiesel production using acidification-electrocoagulation followed by adsorption. Master's Degree(Chemical and Process Engineering (International Program)). King Mongkut's University of Technology North Bangkok. Central Library. : King Mongkut's University of Technology North Bangkok, 2018.
Purification of glycerol from biodiesel production using acidification-electrocoagulation followed by adsorption
Abstract:
Biodiesel production of refined palm oil generates 10% crude glycerol as by-product that could be utilized. However, the purity of crude glycerol was lower than 30% (21.4% in this work) and not use to the raw material for production of personal care, chemical, pharmaceutical and food products. So, it is essential to purify the crude glycerol to 95%-99% with minimal additional processes and chemicals. Traditionally, chemical treatments by adding acids were used to separate the impurities. Nevertheless, the treatment time was more than 4 days. In this study, the acidification-electrocoagulation with AC electric current at low voltage of 24 V for 5 min interaction with the chemical treatment by using H3PO4 at 1.20 M varying pH (1-5) and hexane was applied to reduce the separation time. Then, the enrich-glycerol layer was harvested and neutralized with 50%w/v of NaOH and evaporated at 100°C for 30 min. The enrich-glycerol from other organics was further extracted by adding methanol at the ratio of 4:1 of enrich-glycerol. Subsequently, inorganic salts were filtered. Finally, other impurities were removed, and the color were improved by the absorption using activated charcoal and molecular sieves adsorbents mixture for 3 adsorption times. The purity of purified glycerol was 95.7% with the power consumption of 0.0011 kW·h.
King Mongkut's University of Technology North Bangkok. Central Library