The depletion of fossil fuels is leading researchers to look at biofuels, such as butanol as renewable resources. Butanol is a more energy dense bio-alcohol than the commonly used ethanol, but its potential is limited by the ability to produce and recover it. Using supercritical carbon dioxide is a promising alternative to usual methods of bio-alcohol extraction, though the process is difficult to scale up. Understanding mass transfer behavior is important to scale-up. This project substantiates a prediction for the mass transfer coefficient kla by fitting correlations for kla to the predicted values. This comparison of model and correlations confirmed the accuracy of the model as a predictor of mass transfer coefficients in supercritical fluid extraction.

• This report represents the work of one or more WPI undergraduate students submitted to the faculty as evidence of completion of a degree requirement. WPI routinely publishes these reports on its website without editorial or peer review.

Creator

• Frigo, John

Publisher

• Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Identifier

• E-project-042618-142210

Advisor

• Timko, Michael T.

Year

• 2018

Date created

• 2018-04-26

Resource type

• Major Qualifying Project

Major

• Chemical Engineering

Rights statement

• In Copyright