Environmental pollution has raised the concern on the search for the alternative energy sources. Biomass derived diesel fuel, termed biodiesel, can replace petroleum- based diesel fuels. Environmental benefit of replacing fossil fuels with biomass-based fuels is that the energy obtained from biomass does not add to the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that causes global warming.The present work concerned with studying the performance of batch reactive packed distillation to produce biodiesel (methyl oleate) by the reaction of methanol and oleic acid using homogeneous catalysts SO,experimentally and theoretically.4The experiment work concerns with constructing a lab-scale packed reactive distillation column which consists a heat resistance glass distillation column 42 cm total height and 3.5 cm inside column diameter, packed with glass rashing rings of 10 mm length, 6 mm outside diameter, and 3 mm inside diameter at one atmosphere pressure.The effect of many parameters on conversion of oleic acid to biodiesel have been studied such as molar ratio of methanol to oleic acid 4:1, 6:1 and 8:1, amount of catalyst 0.6, 1.2 and 1.8 g sulfuric acid/g oleic acid, reaction time 36, 57 and 75minutes, and reaction temperature 100oC, 120o C and 130oC in order to find the best conditions to produce biodiesel (methyl oleate) with higher conversion by batch reactive distillation.The design of the experiment by the Taguchi method was considered for performing the minimum numbers of experiments of (9). The best operating conditions are MEOH/OLAC feed molar ratio 8:1, catalyst amount 1.2 g sulfuric acid/g oleic acid, time of reaction 57 min and reaction temperature 130C, these conditions give oleic acid conversion of 93.5%. Also the results show that the molar ratio of methanol to oleic acid is the most influential parameter on the conversion of oleic acid, while the time has a less effect by comparing to other variables.
