Thermal risks assessment of vegetable oil epoxidation

Sebastien Leveneur, Lionel Estel, Cyril Crua

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

    35 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    This article describes thermal risk assessment of vegetable oil epoxidation by peroxycarboxylic acid. It is a liquid-liquid system where several exothermic reactions occur. Acetic acid was used as the carboxylic acid, and oleic acid was chosen as a model molecule because it is a common fatty acid in the triglyceride molecule. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and accelerating rate calorimetry (ARC) were used to determine safety criteria such as the final temperature (T (Final)), T (D24,) and time to maximum rate under adiabatic condition (TMRad). We found that the calculation of TMRad based on DSC data could be incorrect when assuming a zero-order kinetic reaction. By using a process temperature of 70 A degrees C, the extrapolated final temperature was found to be 544 A degrees C from DSC experiments, T (D24) was estimated to 20 A degrees C based on ARC experiment, and TMRad was calculated to 164 min from ARC experiments. These criteria indicate the process can lead to a thermal runaway. Therefore, we recommend that vegetable oil epoxidation by peroxycarboxylic acid should not be performed in batch reactor, but in semi-batch mode.
    Original languageUndefined/Unknown
    Pages (from-to)795–804
    JournalJournal of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry
    Volume122
    Issue number2
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2015
    MoE publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

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