Priasta S Prasojo

27 Desember 2011

Undergraduate Student, Chemical Engineering Department, Gadjah Mada University

Title Research

            Production of Triacetin as Octane Booster from Glycerol byproduct of Biodiesel Process 

Outline:

Fuel oil is a source of energy with the largest consumption in the whole world today when compared with other energy sources. But now, the current world fuel crisis Today global crude oil prices continue to rise. Many countries, especially Indonesia, are experiencing fuel shortage problem (from fossil fuels) for their own country. Reserves of crude oil that comes from these fossil continues to decline while the number of consumption continues to increase every year, so need to look for other alternative fuels, mainly from renewable materials. One alternative is biodiesel, to replace diesel fuel.

Currently the biodiesel industry growing rapidly. Along with many biodiesel industry is a byproduct of glycerol produced in significant amounts as well. Glycerol product value can be increased by esterification using reactive distillation with acetic acid and sulfuric acid as catalyst to produce triglycerides that have a selling price higher than the glycerol. In reactive distilation, esterification carried out by mixing acetic acid and glycerol with a specific ratio so as to produce products of triglyceride and water. One of the product is water, are removed continuously. This causes the equilibrium to shift right so that the desired product (triglyceride) more formed.

This research focused on studying the technology to get triglycerides reactive distillation by using glycerol and acetic acid, using sulfuric acid catalyst. The result is expected to be used for further studies on reactive distillation so as to provide accurate data for its application in industrial scale.