One fact in common to all the recent contributors to this thread has been the bad effects of water produced in the acid esterification of FFAs; including saponification in the subsequent base transestrification stage. Most of us like to keep things simple, so I contemplate a boiling operation between acid and basic stages to evaporate the unwanted water. This would apply to our Scottish lard chip fat supply. The energy burden need not be too onerous using heat exchangers to recover some of the sensible heat (latent heat can't be easily recovered), and by using glycerol as heating fuel. I am a little worried about what boiling sulphuric acid (albeit dilute at this stage) will do to ordinary piping and vessel materials.
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