Design of a Lab-Scale Mini-Plant for Optimization of a Fixed Bed Catalytic Reactor for the Production of Chemicals From Sustainable Feedstocks

The production of biodiesel from vegetable oils yields large quantities of waste crude glycerol as a by-product. This glycerol has the effect of reducing the overall carbon utilization of the biodiesel production process. However, if the crude glycerol could be used to create an industrially important and sustainable product, the carbon utilization and the economics of the overall biodiesel production process could be improved.

It is well known that a range of valuable chemical products can be produced from crude glycerol. Based on the established literature data, a lab-scale miniplant was designed and built to produce an array of C3 compounds from waste crude glycerol. The reactor has the ability to produce compounds such as acrolein, 1,2-propanediol, 1,3-propanediol, hydroxyacetone, and acrylic acid. The purpose of this research is to conduct a series of experiments to determine the optimum operating conditions for this reactor.

Experiments were also run to calibrate the gas chromatograph used in analyzing product samples from the lab reactor. Calibration allowed for determination of the effects of flow rate, composition, temperature, and catalyst concentration on the reaction. These parameters were optimized by identifying trends in the laboratory data.