Biodiesel Production from Used Cooking Oil Using Integrated Double Column Reactive Distillation: Simulation Study

Dependency on fossil – based energy has become a global problem. Indonesia has started a movement in changing energy sources from fossil to new and renewable energy. Biodiesel is one of the renewable energy sources. Used cooking oil is one of the prospective feed-stock in biodiesel production. Used cooking oil contains 21.84% free fatty acid and 78.16% triglycerides. This study simulated the production of biodiesel from used cooking oil using the Aspen Plus v10 software. The production system used an Integrated Double Column Reactive Distillation (IDC-RD) system. The thermodynamic method employed in the simulation system was UNIQUAC. This study used the sensitivity analysis function in the Aspen Plus v10 application to analyze the effect of reflux ratio, the bottom to feed ratio, and the methanol to oil ratio on the reaction conversion. The reflux ratio applied in the simulation was 0.5 – 200, the bottom to feed ratio was 0.25 - 0.9, and the methanol to oil ratio was 1: 3 - 9:8. It was found that the esterification column with a reflux ratio of 0.5, a bottom to feed ratio of 0.5, and a methanol-oil ratio of 4: 1 resulted in a conversion of 96.59%. It was also demonstrated that the transesterification column with a reflux ratio of 0.5, a bottom to feed ratio of 0.5, and a methanol-oil ratio of 3: 1 resulted in a conversion of 99.98%.