Oilseed Enzymatic Pretreatment for Efficient Oil Recovery in Biodiesel Production Industry: a Review

Abstract

Biodiesel is an alternative to fossil diesel, non-toxic, and less pollutant. The production of biodiesel occurs with the use of oils, which are extracted from oleaginous seeds such as soybean, rapeseed, and palm fruit. The extraction of oils from oilseeds is one bottleneck of biodiesel production impacting on significant processes’ losses and productivity. This review analyzes different technologies to improve the oil extraction focusing on the enzyme-assisted aqueous extraction (EAAE) methods. EAAE is an environmentally friendly technology that takes advantage of the degradation efficiency of the enzymes, in this case hemicellulases preparations, which specifically degrade different structures that are present in vegetable cell walls to improve oil extraction from oilseeds. The enzymes used in this process are industrially produced and are highly efficient, but with high costs. The use of agro-industrial subproducts or the improvement of the enzymes’ producing strains could be an interesting solution for viable enzymatic preparations’ production to attend the biodiesel industries’ demand. EAAE treatment also shows great potential in techno-economic analysis allowing a faster recovery of profits and at a smaller production scale than the hexane extraction methodology.