PURIFICATION OF CRUDE GLYCEROL BY SHORT PATH EVAPORATION. THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL ANALYSIS OF PROCESS PARAMETERS

Authors

  • Ancuța Roxana TRIFOI Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca; The Research Institute for the Auxiliary Organic Products, Medias, Romania., Romania. Email: atrifoi@chem.ubbcluj.ro.
  • Augustin CRUCEAN The Research Institute for the Auxiliary Organic Products, Medias, Romania., Romania. Corresponding author: atrifoi@chem.ubbcluj.ro.
  • Lucica STĂNULEȚ The Research Institute for the Auxiliary Organic Products, Medias, Romania., Romania. Corresponding author: atrifoi@chem.ubbcluj.ro.
  • Olimpiu BLĂJAN The Research Institute for the Auxiliary Organic Products, Medias, Romania., Romania. Corresponding author: atrifoi@chem.ubbcluj.ro.
  • Paul-Şerban AGACHI Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania; Department of Chemical, Materials and Metallurgical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Botswana International University of Science and Technology, Palapye, Botswana. Email: serban.agachi@ubbcluj.ro. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4298-1826

Keywords:

glycerol, molecular distillation, mean free path

Abstract

Crude glycerol, the by-product from biodiesel production process, increased drastically as rapid growth of biodiesel industry. This by-product contains many impurities such as water, soaps, free fatty acids, esters etc. This paper presents a process development based on molecular distillation or short path evaporation, for glycerol purification up to 99%. Several experiments and theoretical analysis have been carried out to identify the effect of important parameters (mean free path, Knudsen number, evaporation rate, feed flow rate and evaporation temperature) which determine the performance of the molecular distillation process. The purified glycerol is collected in the distillate while the residue is enriched in higher molar mass components. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was employed to determine the purity of glycerol.

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STUDIA UBB CHEMIA, Volume 60 (LX), No. 4, September 2015

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Published

2015-12-30

How to Cite

TRIFOI, A. R. ., CRUCEAN, A. ., STĂNULEȚ, L. ., BLĂJAN, O. ., & AGACHI, P.- Şerban . (2015). PURIFICATION OF CRUDE GLYCEROL BY SHORT PATH EVAPORATION. THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL ANALYSIS OF PROCESS PARAMETERS. Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai Chemia, 60(4), 157–164. Retrieved from https://studia.reviste.ubbcluj.ro/index.php/chemia/article/view/8503

Issue

Volume 60, No. 4, 2015

Section

Articles

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Copyright (c) 2015 Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai Chemia

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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