Kinetic Study of Palm Fatty Acid Distillate Esterification with Glycerol over Strong Acidic Cation Exchanger Tulsion 42SM

Abstract

Palm Fatty Acid Distillate (PFAD) is a byproduct of CPO production. PFAD conversion into monoglyceride would give significant economic added value to it. With free fatty acid as the major component which composes the PFAD, then the esterification process was the right choice. Utilization of strong acidic cation resin as a catalyst is interesting. The catalyst could be easily separated physically. Natural esterification reaction would run reversibly so that the reflux system would be created to remove water. Reflux system used xylene as the solvent. To find the optimum condition for reaction parameters, reaction temperature, mole ratio of PFAD-glycerol, and catalyst loading were varied. Two heterogeneous reaction mechanisms, Langmuir - Hinshelwood and Eley - Rideal model, were tried to fit with the experimental data which resulted in the first model fitted the experimental data better than the second model. The reaction mechanism would involve the side reaction of diglyceride and triglyceride formation.