Acetone cosolvent for Biodiesel reactions

[julesandtash]

Clearly there are others playing with acetone in bio.
I saw this on the web yesterday ..... http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2011/GC/c1gc15049a

I was not willing to pay the money to download the full article but it looks interesting

[1958steveflying]

Clearly there are others playing with acetone in bio.
I saw this on the web yesterday ..... http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2011/GC/c1gc15049a

I was not willing to pay the money to download the full article but it looks interesting

A good find Jules... so we need to try adding Acetone to the reaction. Looks like they get a reaction at ambient temp's in record times with it.. Now that would be good... we just have to find out how much ! !

[Tony]

Topic split.

Have a read of this one too.

http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4344/2/1/191/pdf (see PDF page 17 or page 207 as written in the doc)

Surprisingly, the formation of FAME was not retarded in the co-solvent method even in the presence of 5 wt.% of water as shown in Figure 4. In contrast, the yield of FAME at 60 min became ca. 15% in the presence of 5 wt.% of water in the conventional mechanical stirring method. Furthermore, the excess amounts of methanol and acetone in the BDF layer after phase separation were simultaneously recovered by distilling the BDF layer at 60 °C under reduced pressure of 0.1 atm, and they were used for the next experiment.

Article seems to suggest 25% Acetone by weight to oil but it gets re-used and clearly water is less of an issue.

We could distil it out but then how to work out ratio of Methanol/Acetone/Water recovered?  Unless we split the distillate into different containers at different temps?

No soap would certainly make for easy washing for you water wash boys.

[photoman290]

if anyone want to try acetone barretines sell it or cfsnet have it as well

http://www.cfsnet.co.uk/cgi-local/ss000001.pl?page=search&SS=acetone&search.x=16&search.y=12&search=ACTION&PR=-1&TB=A

[photoman290]

talking of papers  does anyone have an athens number?

[Tony]

So roughly looking at £27.50 per 100l of oil to be processed, but potentially recoverable.

[photoman290]

Clearly there are others playing with acetone in bio.
I saw this on the web yesterday ..... http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2011/GC/c1gc15049a

I was not willing to pay the money to download the full article but it looks interesting

did you look at the supplementary info on the right hand side of the page. that is free.

[1958steveflying]

Topic split.

Have a read of this one too.

http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4344/2/1/191/pdf (see PDF page 17 or page 207 as written in the doc)

Surprisingly, the formation of FAME was not retarded in the co-solvent method even in the presence of 5 wt.% of water as shown in Figure 4. In contrast, the yield of FAME at 60 min became ca. 15% in the presence of 5 wt.% of water in the conventional mechanical stirring method. Furthermore, the excess amounts of methanol and acetone in the BDF layer after phase separation were simultaneously recovered by distilling the BDF layer at 60 °C under reduced pressure of 0.1 atm, and they were used for the next experiment.

Article seems to suggest 25% Acetone by weight to oil but it gets re-used and clearly water is less of an issue.

We could distil it out but then how to work out ratio of Methanol/Acetone/Water recovered?  Unless we split the distillate into different containers at different temps?

No soap would certainly make for easy washing for you water wash boys.

With the BP of Acetone being 67c it would be difficult to split it from Methanol but no doubt further investigation may come across the ratio's that come out a 60c.

If we can glean enough information it seems a reaction at ambient temperature using Acetone/Methanol and reduced catalysts can be carried out in minutes, now that would be progress eh.

[photoman290]

not had any luck finding a free copy of the paper jules linked to, but i did find this one.
http://comum.rcaap.pt/bitstream/123456789/1297/1/Transesterification%20of%20rapeseed%20oil%20with%20methanol%20in%20the%20presence%20of%20various%20co-solvents.pdf

i think i have read this one before.
i might be able to get the jules one if i can find someone in cambridge with a UL card. will ask around.  anyone if oxfords or cambridge with uni access should be able to get it.  yes i know there are other university's but those are  the 2 i know. newcastle would be good as they have a good chemistry dept with someone working on bio fuels.

[Dickjotec]

Following this with interest.
If the reaction can be reliably done in the time suggested it makes the concept of a smaller, portable , rector viable. It also raises the possibility of a potentially simple continual processing reactor with demething being done under vacuum.
Dick

[1958steveflying]

Following this with interest.
If the reaction can be reliably done in the time suggested it makes the concept of a smaller, portable , reactor viable.
Dick

It certainly does.

[photoman290]

for those like me struggling with boiling points of acetone at various vacuums.

http://www.trimen.pl/witek/calculators/wrzenie.html

100 torr seems reasonable. that means acetone will boil at 22c

this should be well in the range of a cheap vacuum pump.

next problem a vessel that will take 100 torr without being to difficult or expensive. anyone a bit more used to using vacuum systems?

don't get the idea i know what i am talking about. just relaying stuff from Wikipedia and google in case there is somebody who knows about this stuff. all sounds fairly doable with what we have already. pd condenser and sealed container for the acetone.
a process not needing heat sounds good.
i should be getting the paper jules  linked to tomorrow.

[photoman290]

 have the paper if anyone wants it. email me and i will send it. not a lot more info just confirms that dropping the glys takes a lot of meth out of the reaction so slows down the formation of FAME. which i think most people guessed already. they say they recovered the acetone and meth from a 300 litre batch at 60C and 0.1 atm in 30 minutes. all the reactions were done at 25C

[Tony]

Probably don't need the whole document, does it confirm 25% wt. Acetone as the volume?  Any reason given of this value vs say, 10% or 20%?

[photoman290]

they confirm 25% after trying 10% 20% and 5%. no reason given. they used KOH rather than NAOH.  the paper is only about 3 pages so quite short. it looks easy enough to test with with KOH and ASM to see if there is a difference. reaction only takes 10 minutes at 25c. i would try it myself ecept it is raining outside and i dont want to play with meth and acetone in front of the fire