(33e) Glycerol as a Raw Material for Lactic Acid Production for Industrial Process Course

Colombia is a palm oil producer, mainly for biodiesel by transesterification process, and the Glycerol is a sub product. Several Research Centers have been investigating in the possible uses for this raw material. The present Job is associated with the application of the contents of several tools used in industrial engineering curricula for the feasibility study for lactic acid production from glycerol. The application of the different principles studied in industrial Engineering Courses and the uses of computational tools, data bases and free software are shown in this proyect.

The Industrial Engineering program at UNIMINUTO is relatively new program in Colombia. The curricula have courses like Chemistry, Technical Drawing, Industrial process, thermodynamic, sustainable development and Economy, among others. In the present work, the feasibility of lactic acid production, different topics of these all materials were employed, and are described here. An idea was proposed, what can we do with the glycerol, from biodiesel production? And how obtain develop and prosperity from this resource? Is that possible? To answer these questions, a literature research was carried on. Several alternatives were found. In this part the chemistry was the support. After that, important economics concepts were used for make a decision of which products could be obtain and ultimately the concepts of industrial process and sustainable development were employed to obtain the final results.

The main idea is to shown how with this bases and these resources, a new process for the Acid Lactic using glycerol can be generated. With this can be seen how integrating engineering tools is possible answer critical questions about the education for new engineering generation.Several software have been used in this project VISIO, AUTOCAD, EPIWEB. 

The present research is classified as young researcher group in the Industrial Engineering Department in the UNIMINUTO.