Abstract
The development of biodiesel industry in the recent past brought into discussion the valorization of glycerol as the byproduct of
this technology. Dehydration of glycerol leads to acrolein, mainly used as a raw material in the production of acrylic acid and its
esters. Several research efforts dealing with the synthesis of acrolein from glycerol are reported in the literature. However, they
are limited to catalyst testing on laboratory scale, no attention being paid to the process feasibility at an industrial scale. The goal
of this paper is to fill this gap by presenting an integrated design study of the glycerol dehydration process. A simplified kinetic
model was developed based on published data, this one being able to predict with sufficient accuracy the rate of the main reaction
and the formation of relevant by-products (carbonyl compounds, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and coke). A reaction system
was designed, similar to the reactor-regenerator unit usually used in hydrocarbon catalytic cracking (FCC). Moreover, the
operating conditions were determined in such a way to maximize the selectivity and ensure the autothermal operation. The
reactor effluent is sent to a separation section consisting mainly in distillation units. Due to formation of a low-boiling azeotrope,
extractive distillation is employed for separating the acrolein-water mixture, using a part of the fresh glycerol feed as solvent. For
a set of typical operating conditions, the separation section was designed in Aspen Plus environment. An economic evaluation
study was performed using Aspen Economic Evaluation module, following which an acrolein price of 1.13 EUR/kg was
determined. By comparing this value with the market one of 3.3 EUR/kg, the feasibility of the proposed process from the
economical point of view will be emphasized.