Comparison study of experimental and simulation temperature data in the esterification process of Palm Oil Fatty Acid Distillate (PFAD) in a fluidised reactor

Abstract

Palm Oil Fatty Acid Distillate (PFAD) is a by-product from palm oil refinery process and normally used as ingredient of making candles, soap and others. Recently, many researchers have been carried out to diversify the utilisation of PFAD in industry. Among others is the enzimatically production of sugar ester using PFAD as substrate. However, limited kinetic and simulation data hindered the effort of large scale production. Hence, this study was executed to determine the kinetic parameters of the esterification process based on the simplified Ping-pong Bi-Bi model under the temperature range of 30°C ~ 45°C where immobilised lipase (Lipozyme 1M) was used as biocatalyst and isopropyl alcohol was used as solvent. The reaction was conducted in a cylinder resemble a fluidised reactor. Kinetic parameters derived from the experiments were used to simulate the production of sugar ester. The optimum temperature for the production of sugar ester was found to be at 40°C. The experimental results deviate slightly from the simulation results with error percentage of less than 11%. The model can be used to predict the production of sugar ester when the concentrations of the reactants are varied.