THERMODYNAMICS REVIEW OF FATTY ALCOHOL PRODUCTION FROM FATTY ACID METHYL ESTER AT LOW PRESSURE

• Main Author: Gratia Malau, Sola
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/51491
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

Indonesia is one of the largest country of palm oil production who supplies 85-90% of palm oil from all over the world. Indonesia has a great potential to process palm oil become its derivative products. One of palm oil derivative products that is widely used in process industry is fatty alcohol, which can be produces from methyl ester hydrogenation. The hydrogenation process happens with the presence of catalyst which is selective to the alcohol bonds. Commercial catalysts that used for this process is Cu/Zn/Al, Ru complex, and Fe complex catalyst. The hydrogenation products that may be produced are fatty alcohols, wax esters, alkanes, water, methanol, and fatty acids. The purpose of this research is to determine the effect of various types of metal catalyst on methyl ester hydrogenation on the fatty alcohols selectivity and methyl esters conversion. The effect of catalysts for hydrogenation process determined by comparing the equilibrium conversion with the real data. There are several steps in this research, including material preparation, catalyst preparation, main experiment, feed and product analysis, and simulation using Aspen Plus V10. Cu-based catalyst was synthesized by coprecipitation method. In this research, Cu, Cu, Fe, Rh, Pt, Ir, and Pd-based catalyst were studied. Methyl esters hydrogenation is tested under several conditions with hydrogen pressure range of 31 bar to 60 bar and temperature range of 115oC to 300oC. Hydrogenation takes place in a 300 ml batch reactor. The feed conversion was analyzed using the saponification value method. Based on the result of this research, hydrogenation od ME24 using the help of Cu/Zn/Al and Cu/Zn/Al/Mg catalyst resulted in a feed conversion of 59,4% and 60% within an hour. ME24 hydrogenation has not reach an equilibrium state. At hydrogen pressure of 40 bar and temperature of 240oC, the equilibrium conversion of ME24 is 99,99% with the fatty alcohol selectivity of 29,03%.