Bulletin of Chemical Reaction Engineering & Catalysis
2014: BCREC Volume 9 Issue 2 Year 2014 (August 2014)

Electro-Catalysis System for Biodiesel Synthesis from Palm Oil over Dielectric-Barrier Discharge Plasma Reactor

Istadi Istadi (Laboratory of Chemical and Process Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering, Diponegoro University, Jln. Prof. Soedarto, Kampus Undip Tembalang, Semarang 50275)
Ardian D. Yudhistira (Laboratory of Chemical and Process Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering, Diponegoro University, Jln. Prof. Soedarto, Kampus Undip Tembalang, Semarang 50275)
Didi D. Anggoro (Laboratory of Chemical and Process Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering, Diponegoro University, Jln. Prof. Soedarto, Kampus Undip Tembalang, Semarang 50275)
Luqman Buchori (Laboratory of Chemical and Process Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering, Diponegoro University, Jln. Prof. Soedarto, Kampus Undip Tembalang, Semarang 50275)



Article Info

Publish Date
30 Aug 2014

Abstract

Biodiesel synthesis reaction routes from palm oil using plasma electro-catalysis process over Dielectric-Barrier Discharge (DBD) plasma reactor were studied. The study was focused on finding possible reaction mechanism route during plasma electro-catalysis process. The prediction was performed based on the changes of Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometer (GC-MS) and Fourier Transform Infra Red (FT-IR) analyses to the biodiesel products with respect to time length of plasma treatment. It was found that main reaction mechanism occurred in the plasma electro-catalysis system was non-thermal pyrolysis rather than transesterification. The main reactions within the plasma treatment were due to collision between high energetic electrons (supplied from high voltage power supply through high voltage electrode) and the reaction mixtures. The high energetic electrons affected the electrons pair of covalent bonding to be excited or dissociated even ionized at higher energy. Therefore, this plasma electro-catalysis system was promising for biodiesel synthesis from vegetable oils due to only very short time reaction was needed, even no need a catalyst, no soap formation, and no glycerol by-product. This system could produce fatty acid methyl ester yield of 75.65% at 120 seconds and other possible chemicals, such as alkynes, alkanes, esters, carboxylic acid, and aldehydes. However, during the plasma process, the reaction mechanisms were still difficult to be controlled due the action of available high energetic electrons. The advanced studies on how to control the reaction mechanism selectively in the plasma electro-catalysis will be published elsewhere. © 2014 by Authors, Published by BCREC Group. This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

Copyrights © 2014






Journal Info

Abbrev

bcrec

Publisher

Subject

Chemical Engineering, Chemistry & Bioengineering Chemistry

Description

Bulletin of Chemical Reaction Engineering & Catalysis, a reputable international journal, provides a forum for publishing the novel technologies related to the catalyst, catalysis, chemical reactor, kinetics, and chemical reaction engineering. Scientific articles dealing with the following topics in ...