Abstract
Biodiesel is an alternative source of energy in diesel engines in its neat form or as a blend with conventional diesel fuel. The raw feedstock costs represent a lot of the overall biodiesel production cost. Therefore, the employment of waste oils or non-edible oils (which do not compete with edible oils) as feedstock for biodiesel production are presented as the best alternative. However, the presence of free fatty acids (FFA) in these oils is undesirable for biodiesel production due to the transesterification reaction performance is reduced. Hence, in this paper, the adsorption as treatment for reducing or removing FFA from oils prior to transesterification reaction for biodiesel production is examined using a strong anion-exchange resin in order to avoid esterification reaction employed commonly prior to transesterification reaction.
Highlights
Due to the increasing energy demand and greenhouse gasses problems caused by the use of fossil fuels, it has become necessary to develop alternative fuels as well as renewable sources of energy [1]
The free fatty acids (FFA) reduction from an acid oil (20 mg KOH/g oil) is observed when Dowex 550 A resin is employed as adsorbent (FFA adsorption) or catalyst for esterification reaction. Both treatments produced a significant reduction in acid value; the FFA reduction by adsorption appears to be more effective
fatty acid methyl esters mixture (FAME) content in the product obtained from the esterification reaction was determined by 1H Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) in order to verify the conversion of FFA to FAME
Summary
Due to the increasing energy demand and greenhouse gasses problems caused by the use of fossil fuels, it has become necessary to develop alternative fuels as well as renewable sources of energy [1]. It is necessary to reduce or remove these FFA present in the alternatives feedstocks to edible oils in order carry out the transesterification reaction without a reduction in the performance of the same. The present work reports the use of a different anion-exchange resin (Dowex 550A) for adsorbing FFA from different oils as previous step to transesterification reaction in order to replace the esterification reaction. We propose the use of an anion-exchange resin as adsorbent of FFA instead of catalyst due to adsorption is an easier method because it can carry out to low temperature and it not requires an alcohol such as occurs in the esterification reaction; so costs of raw materials can be reduced. Methanol (p.a. 99.8%) used as reactive for esterification and transesterification reaction was supplied by Sigma-Aldrich
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