Investigation of Liquid–Liquid Two-Phase Flow Pattern in Microreactors for Biodiesel Production

Abstract

"> <span style="font-size: 9pt; color: #000000; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal;"><em>In the present study, transesterification of soybean oil to Fatty Acid Methyl Ester</em> <span style="font-size: 9pt; color: #000000; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal;"><em>(FAME) was carried out in the microreactor. The system performance was</em> <span style="font-size: 9pt; color: #000000; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal;"><em>investigated in the presence of hexane as a cosolvent. Furthermore, the effect of</em> <span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Italic; font-size: 9pt; color: #000000; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal;"><em>number of micromixer's inlets on the mixing was one of the o</em><span style="font-size: 9pt; color: #000000; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal;"><em>bjectives in this work.</em> <span style="font-size: 9pt; color: #000000; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal;"><em>For the goals mentioned above, three different experiments were done with and</em> <span style="font-size: 9pt; color: #000000; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal;"><em>without cosolvent in two and three inlet micromixers under optimum conditions. Both</em> <span style="font-size: 9pt; color: #000000; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal;"><em>flow pattern observations and Gas Chromatgoraphy (GC) characterization of FAME</em> <span style="font-size: 9pt; color: #000000; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal;"><em>samples demonstrated that cosolvent technique and micromixer application could</em> <span style="font-size: 9pt; color: #000000; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal;"><em>significantly influence the FAME yield in biodiesel production.</em></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" /></span></span>