Application of Factorial Design of Experiments for the Continuous Hydrogenation of Enriched Castor Oil Methyl Esters

Tulasi Sri Venkata Ramana Neeharika (Centre for Lipid Research, Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad – 500007)
Karna Narayana Prasanna Rani (Centre for Lipid Research, Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad – 500007)
Kasturi Venkata Sesha Adinarayana Rao (Centre for Lipid Research, Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad – 500007)
Thella Prathap Kumar (Chemical Engineering Division, Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad – 500007)
Rachapudi Badari Narayana Prasad (Centre for Lipid Research, Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad – 500007)

Bulletin of Chemical Reaction Engineering & Catalysis
2013: BCREC Volume 8 Issue 2 Year 2013 (December 2013)

Castor oil methyl esters contains nearly 90% ricinoleic acid (12-hydroxy-cis-9-octadecenoic acid). Hydrogen-ated castor oil methyl esters finds several applications in coating, lubricants formulations and pharmaceu-tical areas. The present study reports a fast, simple, efficient and continuous hydrogenation of enriched castor oil methyl ester (ECME) using 10% Pd/C catalyst at different pressures and temperatures. The range of process conditions for this study varied from 30-60 °C, 5-15 bar with constant flow rate of 15 ml/min. The products were analyzed for fatty acid composition and iodine value (IV). The optimized pa-rameters were found to be a temperature of 30 °C, pressure 5 bar, and flow rate of 15 ml/min where maxi-mum hydrogenation of 98.47 % was obtained and the product showed an iodine value of 3.19. © 2013 by Authors, Published by BCREC Group. This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)