Green process for fatty acid production from soybean oil through microwave-mediated autocatalytic synthesis

Abstract

This study developed a new method that involved autocatalytic hydrolysis of soybean oil using microwave irradiation for fatty acid production. To enhance the conversion yield, a surfactant and fatty acid were added to the reaction mixture. The oil hydrolysis using microwave irradiation had 96.6 % conversion yield within a reaction time of 4 h at 195 °C. Furthermore, this study established a model for describing the kinetics of oil hydrolysis performed using traditional heating and microwave irradiation under different reaction conditions. The model exhibited a good fit to the data (R2 of 0.934 to 0.995), demonstrating the reliability of the developed model. The rate constants and pre-exponential factor observed for the oil hydrolysis process using microwave irradiation were higher than those observed for the oil hydrolysis process using traditional heating, indicating that performing oil hydrolysis by using microwave irradiation achieved a reaction more quickly than using traditional heating. These results suggest that autocatalytic oil hydrolysis using microwave irradiation is an ecofriendly and promising method for fatty acid production.