Optimization of Biodiesel production in Spinning disc Reactor using Response Surface Methodology

An experiment was performed to study Transesterification in spinning disc reactor using response surface methodology. Spinning disc reactor have been fabricated and used for continuous alkali-catalyzed transesterification biodiesel production. The reactor was designed with a 110 mm diameter circular disc made of stainless steel as a static disc and another disc of same dimension made up of high density polyethylene to serve as rotating disc, enclosed on cylindrical vessel made of plexi-glass. The small gap sizes about 1 millimeter between static disc and rotating disc were maintained. The parameters for biodiesel preparation are studied with a response surface methodology (RSM) in this, central composite design (CCD) was used. This method is suitable for fitting the quadratic surface and it helps to optimize the effective parameters with a minimum number of experiments, and also to analyze the interaction between the parameters. The variables studied 1) A: reaction temperature 2) B: Flow Rate of oil and 3) C: catalyst concentration. Mole ratio of oil to methanol was fixed 1:6 by carrying various experiments.