Desain Tipe Obstacle pada Bubble Column Reactor untuk Produksi Biodiesel Secara Non-Katalitik

Abstract

Biodiesel is produced through the transesterification reaction of methanol with vegetable oils such as soybean oil, rapeseed, palm, sunflower seeds or jatropha. Commonly, there are two methods used in producing biodiesel; a non-catalytic and catalytic. One of application of non-catalytic method of biodiesel production is the Superheated metanol vapor method (SMV)-Bubble Column. However, the reaction rate of this method is very low. The reaction rate of biodiesel production could be increased by adding a perforated plate (called obstacle) in the reactor, due to obstacle serves to enlarge the contact surface area between methanol vapor and oil. The design of obstacle structures is thought to affect the contact surface area between metanol vapor and oil. By using the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), the several types of obstacle will be simulated. The analysis of the design of obstacles performed using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) because the use of CFD in the design analysis can reduce costs and shorten the time of research. CFD can also clearly describe the shape and distribution of bubbles in the reactor, making it easier to analyze the performance of the obstacles created. The simulation result shows that obstacle A3 has higher contact surface area than other obstacles that is equal to 0.0257 m2. The verification of the simulation data has proven that the obstacle (A3) results a higher total production compared to obstacle that has lower contact surface area (obstacle DO7 with an average of 0.0200 m2 surface contact area). For 5 hours time of operation, the total biodiesel production using obstacle DO7 are 7.32 gram at the first production and 7.41 gram at the second production, while the total production of biodiesel by using A3 obstacle at the first and second production are 7.74 gram and 8.7 gram respectively