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Design and construction of a batch reactor with external recirculation to obtain biodisel from residual oil frying under subcritical conditions

Abstract:

A batch reactor was designed and built to obtain biodiesel from frying oil under sub-critical conditions, with the purpose of reducing the reaction time to the minimum possible. The design process is focused on the selection of the material and the verification of its resistance by means of a FEM analysis from a Design of Experiments (DOE). Three levels of pres-sure, temperature and wall thickness, respectively, and a material categorical factor at two levels were considered. The results obtained were that the ap-propriate material for manufacturing the reactor is 304 stainless steel with a design safety factor of 1. For constructing the system it was also necessary to select all the complementary components. The final operation tests showed that it is possible to safely obtain the biofuel in the batch reactor with a degree of conversion 88%, in a range of 5 to 8 minutes.