Dear fellows:
I am currently working on trans-esterification of crude algal oil turned into crude ethyl ester. In the processing of crude lipid (30kg) was added into the reactor with 60kg or ethanol (EtOH) at 78C for 4 hours. After the reaction take place, 3kg of NaOH was added into the reactor for neutralization and left overnight. That is where the problem occurred. Two phases were occurred, on the top phase the crude ethyl ester with ethanol was occurred which it has lower viscosity and easier to flow while at the bottom phase the crude ethyl ester which had higher viscosity (sticky lipid) and couldn’t flow. For that case, I was able to pump the top layer to the separating column. At the bottom layer, the crude ethyl ester was still stick and wasn’t moved at. My question, how to avoid the solidification of crude ethyl ester after neutralization take place during the trans-esterification?
I would appreciate it a lot if you could share your know-how based my request.
Thank you,
Peter Mponzi
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Analytical Chemistry
- Column