Modeling of Liquid-Liquid Extraction Process for Glycerol Purification from Biodiesel Production

This paper shows some generalities about the glycerin byproduct obtained from biodiesel production process, presents an analysis of the ternary equilibrium between methanol, water and glycerol, and shows the influence that temperature has on the balance. This phase diagram illustrates ternary equilibrium at 10, 20 and 50 ℃, keeping the pressure constant at 1 atm （atmosphere） to standardize the analysis. The purpose of it is to establish the best temperature for the purification of glycerol by liquid-liquid extraction method under the ＂extraction in several stages cross flow＂ taking an initial mixture of glycerol with composition 15 wt.% water, 25 wt.% methanol and 60 wt.% glycerol. Water was used as liquid-liquid extraction solvent in order to remove as much methanol as possible from the initial solution due to the existence of a zone of insolubility between the glycerol and water in the ternary equilibrium. By this reason, two solutions are obtained, one consisting of water and methanol containing a trace of glycerin and the other consisting of water, glycerine and traces of methanol, which contain only 4.62% of the total methanol which enter in the process of liquid-liquid extraction, with 60.62% of the total glycerol, which is sent to a fractional distillation process to purify glycerin up to 98% by weight.