Abstract
An attractive alternative to the use of fossil fuels is biodiesel, which can be obtained from a variety of feedstock through different transesterification systems such as ultrasound, microwave, biological, chemical, among others. The efficient and cost-effective biodiesel production depends on several parameters such as free fatty acid content in the feedstock, transesterification reaction efficiency, alcohol:oil ratio, catalysts type, and several parameters during the production process. However, biodiesel production from vegetable oils is under development, causing the final price of biodiesel to be higher than diesel derived from petroleum. An alternative to decrease the production costs will be the use of economical feedstocks and simple production processes. Castor oil is an excellent raw material in terms of price and quality, but especially this non-edible vegetable oil does not have any issues or compromise food security. Recently, the use of castor oil has attracted attention for producing and optimizing biodiesel production, due to high content of ricinoleic fatty acid and the possibility to esterify with only methanol, which assures low production costs. Additionally, biodiesel from castor oil has different advantages over conventional diesel. Some of them are biodegradable, non-toxic, renewable, they can be used alone, low greenhouse gas emission, among others. This review discusses and analyzes different transesterification processes, technologies, as well as different technical aspects during biodiesel production using castor oil as a feedstock.
Highlights
Biodiesel definition according to the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) is a fuel composed mainly of mono-alkyl esters derived from renewable vegetable oils or animal fats meeting the ASTM D6751 requirements
This review describes the production of biodiesel from castor oil as feedstock
Biodiesel production around the world is produced from different feedstocks and vegetable oils
Summary
Biodiesel definition according to the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) is a fuel composed mainly of mono-alkyl esters derived from renewable vegetable oils or animal fats meeting the ASTM D6751 requirements. One of the main advantages of biodiesel is its high content of oxygen (>10%) that promotes and improves combustion processes in diesel engines. It does not contain sulphur, no harmful sulphur oxides are generated during its combustion and released into the environment [3,4]. The main fatty acid in castor oil is ricinoleic acid (C18 H34 O3 ), with approximately 80–90% of total fatty acid content It gives characteristics such as high viscosity, high miscibility, low iodine content, low freezing point, which make it an appropriate raw material to produce biodiesel [8,9]. The most common management practices to valorize biodiesel by-products are briefly presented
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