On September 16, 2010 João A.P. Coutinho from CICECO, Chemistry Department, University of Averio, Portugal, visited DTU Chemical Engineering where he gave the seminar “Modeling of phase equilibria in the biodiesel industry with the Cubic-Plus-Association (CPA) Equation of State”.
In his presentation, given in the Lounge at DTU Chemical Engineering, Professor Coutinho focused on model systems of interest for the biodiesel production.
The background for Professor Coutinhos presentation is the fact that biodiesel is a promising and sustainable short-term alternative fuel, as the continuous increase in crude oil prices, scarce resources of fossil energies and environmental concerns limit the use of petroleum based fuels.
The transesterification of vegetable oils and animal fats is the most used method to produce biodiesel and commonly used alcohols are methanol or ethanol although higher chain alcohols have been suggested. A better understanding and prediction of the phase equilibria that are present in the biodiesel production are required for the design and optimization of the process.
In the seminar on September 16 which was part of the 2010 departmental seminar series at DTU Chemical Engineering, Professor Coutinho presented the good predictive performance of the CPA EoS for the description of vapour-liquid and liquid-liquid equilibria of binary, ternary and multicomponent mixtures containing alcohols, glycerol, water, FAME’s and oils.
João A.P. Coutinho took his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark, in 1996 and currently holds a position as Associate Professor at the Department of Chemistry of the University of Aveiro.