Oleochemicals Process Flowsheets & Simulations
Explore 3 validated, solved Oleochemicals simulation flowsheets in MaximaLabs — real components: tripalmitin, triolein_ooo, water, palmitic_acid, oleic_acid, glycerol. Open any one directly in your browser.
Solved via: PENG-ROBINSON.
Fat splitting: fatty acids from palm kernel oil
Continuous high-pressure countercurrent fat splitting (Colgate-Emery process): triglyceride oil hydrolyzed with excess water at ~260 C / 55 bar to free fatty acids plus glycerol. The databank has no lauric/myristic acid or their triglycerides (palm kernel oil's actual dominant fatty acids), so the feed is modeled as tripalmitin/triolein hydrolyzing to palmitic/oleic acid instead -- the same reaction chemistry and process conditions, a different (available) fatty-acid slate. The real unit gravity-settles the fatty-acid and glycerol-water phases downstream; that decanting step is not modeled here (scope note), so the product stream is the full reactor effluent.
6 unit ops • PENG-ROBINSON
17 0
View & openFatty alcohols from methyl ester hydrogenolysis
High-pressure hydrogenolysis of a fatty acid methyl ester over a copper-chromite catalyst to the corresponding fatty alcohol plus methanol byproduct, the route used by natural-fatty-alcohol producers such as Oxiteno. Modeled with methyl palmitate as the ester feed (the C16 member of the coconut/palm-kernel-derived ester slate these plants actually run); a flash removes unreacted hydrogen for recycle and a column recovers methanol overhead from the crude fatty alcohol.
9 unit ops • PENG-ROBINSON
17 0
View & openFatty-ester vacuum fractionation
Biodiesel methyl esters (C16 / C18) split at 0.05 bar — vacuum keeps the bottoms under 515 K; near-total C16 recovery overhead and ~98% C18 in the bottoms (the two components' relative volatility caps bottoms purity there — more stages/reflux do not push it further). From the ChemSep casebook (Fatty_Acids, as methyl esters).
4 unit ops • PENG-ROBINSON
17 0
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