Technology and kinetics of free fatty acids esterification in tung oil

We studied the esterificatien of free fatty acids (FFA) in tung oil with methanol by using activated carbon treated with sulfuric acid as a catalyst, and investigated the effect of different temperatures, methanol/oil mole ratio and catalyst amount on the conversion of FFA. Results show that the optimal reaction condition is when the reaction time is 2 h, the mass fraction of the catalyst to total material is 5%, the molar ratio of menthol to FFA is 15 : 1, and the reaction temperature is 368.15 K. We also investigated the kinetics of esterification at various temperatures. Results indicate that the rate-control step could be attributed to the surface reaction, and within the range of the experimental conditions, the as-calculated kinetics formula can depict the esterification processes well.