Modeling and Simulation of Non-catalytic Transesterification of Cottonseed Oil

Transesterification of vegetable oil is very widely used in the synthesis of methyl esters of fatty acids. These methyl esters found numerous applications in the preparation of various oleo-chemicals having commercial importance. In this study, a mathematical model, which is available in open literature, was used to study the kinetics of non-catalytic batch transesterification of cottonseed oil using methanol. The model is based on the reversible mechanism of the transesterification reaction. A Visual Basic Programming code has been developed to solve the differential equations involved in the study of kinetics of transesterification reaction using Euler’s Method. The effects of the operating parameters such as molar ratio between the triglyceride and alcohol and temperature on the conversion rate were also studied. The simulated results show good agreement with the experimental data available in literature.