Kinetics of Soybean Oil Epoxidation in a Semibatch Reactor
E. Santacesaria, Rosa Turco, Vincenzo Russo, Martino Di Serio, Riccardo Tesser
Abstract
In this work, the kinetics of soybean oil epoxidation with hydrogen peroxide in the presence of formic acid as an oxygen carrier and phosphoric acid as a catalyst has been studied. A biphasic kinetic model developed in a previous work has been improved considering the evolution of four different reactions with time: (1) the oxidation of formic acid to performic acid, occurring in aqueous phase; (2) the epoxidation reaction, occurring in oil phase; (3) the ring-opening reaction, mainly occurring at the liquid–liquid interface; and (4) the performic acid decomposition, occurring in aqueous phase. The kinetics of reactions 1, 3, and 4 have been studied in an independent way, and the best kinetic parameters found and published elsewhere have been used for interpreting the experimental results obtained in performing reaction 2. A kinetic law for this reaction has been proposed, and the related best-fitting parameters have been determined.