Abstract
The use of microwaves as a heating medium to drive the transesterification of vegetable oils into ethyl esters was investigated. A continuous-flow microwave-assisted transesterification of soybean and rice bran oil was carried out in the presence of ethanol, using a molar ratio alcohol/oil of 5:1, and 0.6% w/w of sodium hydroxide as catalyst. The reactions were performed at atmospheric pressure, using a flow rate of 100 mL/min at temperatures of 50 and 73 °C for different reaction times (1, 5, and 10 min). At all tested parameters, the ethyl ester biodiesel produced conformed with ASTM specifications, with conversion rates between 96.7 and 99.3%, indicating a good quality biodiesel. The results indicated that microwave heating can be used effectively to obtain high ethyl esters of fatty acids (biodiesel) yields at lower alcohol/oil ratios, effectively reducing the reaction time, even under continuous-flow reactions due to a reduction in activation energy and an increase in Arrhenius pre-exponential factor. The results indicate that this heating process has potential to be scaled up for use in the industry to produce good quality biodiesel using ethanol as the alcohol of choice.
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