Zahrul Mufrodi

27 Desember 2011

Ph.D student, Chemical Engineering Department UGM

Research title

Triacetin Production from Glycerol (by-Product Biodiesel Production) as Octane Booster

Outline:

            In the world, The price of  fossil fuels have been increasing but its availability has been declining. It has been anticipated with fuel from renewable sources like biodiesel.  Biodiesel production from vegetable oil has been produce glycerol  as  by-product  with the amount of about 10 wt% of total biodiesel product

            Glycerol acetylation with acetic acid produce monoacetin, diacetin and triacetin. In applications, triacetin can be used as fuel additives for increasing  the octane number in gasoline [2][3]. Octane number can be increased by adding fuel additive, known as octane booster. Triacetin  can replace the previous octane booster such as tetraethyl lead (TEL), methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) and ethyl tertiary butyl ether (ETBE). The main strategy used has been conducted to find new applications for the glycerol.

            This research focused on studying the process for production triacetin from glycerol and acetic acid continuously. The process used reactive distillation. This process enables to react at once purifying triacetin product. Water and acetic acid remaining will come out as a distillate and triacetin will be bottom produced. This process is expected to result in continuous triacetin as bioadditive for fuel oil

Scientific Work :

Mufrodi, Z., Rochmadi, Sutijan, and Budiman, A., 2010, “Effects of  Temperature and Catalyst upon Triacetin Production from Glycerol (by-Product Biodiesel Production) as Octane Booster”, Proceedings of International Conference on Advances in Renewable Energy Technologies, Putrajaya, Malaysia.