| Abstract
| - Recent experimental studies on noncatalytic transesterification have shown that high reaction rates, whichjustify the commercial application of this process, can be obtained if the operating conditions are above thecritical pressure and temperature of methanol. Although it is generally agreed that temperatures of >550 Kand high methanol/oil ratios are required to obtain high conversions and high reaction rates, there isdisagreement in the literature regarding the operating pressure, the assumed phase conditions, the use ofco-solvents, and the justification of the sudden increase of rate of reaction with temperature. In the presentwork, the reactor phase transitions are directly observed in a double-windowed cylindrical reactor and theconversion to methyl esters is measured. From direct observations and the modeling of the phase behavior,a better understanding of the supercritical methanol transesterification process is obtained.
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