Kinetics of soybean oil epoxidation with peracetic acid formed in situ in the presence of an ion exchange resin: Pseudo-homogeneous model

A kinetic model was proposed for the epoxidation of vegetable oils with peracetic acid formed in situ from acetic acid and hydrogen peroxide in the presence of an acidic ion exchange resin as a catalyst. The model is pseudo-homogeneous with respect to the catalyst. Besides the main reactions of peracetic acid and epoxy ring formation, the model takes into account the side reaction of epoxy ring opening with acetic acid. The partitioning of acetic acid and peracetic acid between the aqueous and organic phases and the change in the phases? volumes during the process were considered. The temperature dependency of the apparent reaction rate coefficients is described by a reparameterized Arrhenius equation. The constants in the proposed model were estimated by fitting the experimental data obtained for the epoxidations of soybean oil conducted under defined reaction conditions. The highest epoxy yield of 87.73% was obtained at 338 K when the mole ratio of oil unsaturation:acetic acid:hydrogen peroxide was 1:0.5:1.35 and when the amount of the catalyst Amberlite IR-120H was 4.04 wt.% of oil. Compared to the other reported pseudo-homogeneous models, the model proposed in this study better correlates the change of double bond and epoxy group contents during the epoxidation process.