Kinetics Studies of Epoxidation and Oxirane Cleavage-Epoxidized Palm Kernel Oil

Background: Studies pertaining to the epoxidation of fatty acids, garnered much interest in recent years due to the rising demand of eco-friendly epoxides derived from vegetable oils. Methods: Epoxide is an important chemical precursor for the production of alcohols, glycols and polymers, like polyesters and epoxy resin. Epoxidation is the name given to the reaction when the double bonds are converted into epoxide. Results: Temperature at 55oC was used as a reference material in the epoxide process, as it produces a high yield epoxide being 88%. The kinetic rate of epoxidized palm kernel oil, k was obtained to be k11= 0.5125, k12= 0.05045, k21= 0.03185, k41= 0.01 and k51= 0.01243. Conclusion: Hence, by fitting the result with the experimental work and simulation, the summation of error being stimulated by I-sight simulation was 0.731116428 and the correlation between the experimental and simulation data was 0.925544.