Lipid technology: Property prediction and process design/analysis in the edible oil and biodiesel industries

In this work some of the property related issues in lipid processing technology employed in edible oil and biodiesel production are highlighted. This includes the identification of the most representative chemical species (acylglycerides, free fatty acids, tocopherols, sterols, carotenes, and fatty acid methyl esters); their representation and classification in terms of molecular structures; the collection of available experimental data of their pure component physical properties; the adoption of appropriate property-process models for the design and analysis of production processes through computer-aided tools like process simulation.

Whenever experimental data were not available, the property models based on the group contribution approach (GC) was employed to fill-out the gaps in the database. This included pure component single-value properties (for example, the normal melting point temperature or the critical pressure) as well as temperature dependent properties (for example, vapor pressure, liquid density, and liquid viscosity).

Whenever enough data was not available, the PC-SAFT EoS was used to generate pseudo-experimental data for the temperature dependent properties for regression of the GC-based model parameters. The filled database and property models have been employed through a process simulation to analyze the design issues of typical edible oil processes.