engleski

Modeling and kinetic parameter estimation of enzymatic biodiesel production

Nowadays, microreactor systems found versatile application in different fields of science and industrial production and their applications are spreading more and more. Biodiesel production is no exception. Up to now there have been attempts to produce biodiesel by this technology but it was mostly limited to the use of chemical catalysts (1). Although enzymatic production offers many advantages like mild conditions, absence of unwanted by-products (soap), reusability, simple separation and purification of the resulting biodiesel as well as lower energy consumption this approach is poorly explored (2, 3). In order to develop this new approach it is necessary to find optimal operating conditions and facilitates the identification of the most effective mode of process operation. To do so, detail knowledge of the enzyme kinetic is necessary. Considering the fact that the conditions in microreactors differ from those in the conventional reactors, it is necessary to establish the kinetic parameter values of enzyme reactions also for microreactors. Aim of this work is to estimate kinetic parameters and to develop mathematical model for enzymatic biodiesel production in a microreactor.

biodiesel, enzyme, microreactor, mathematical modeling

This work has been fully supported by Croatian Science Foundation under the project IP-2016-06- 7993.