Biodiesel production by two-stage transesterification with ethanol

Artículo

Resumen *

In this work, a two stages process for ethyl esters production is presented. Different experimental conditions were tested in order to find those which maximize the reaction conversion. In this way, the optimal reaction temperature was found to be 55 °C. Using an ethanol/oil molar ratio of 4.25:1, which equals 25 % v/v alcohol with respect to oil, an appropriate conversion value was obtained with a minimum ethanol consumption. The catalysts used were sodium and potassium hydroxides and methoxides. The hydroxides severely complicate the purification since no phase separation takes place in most of the conditions studied, making the methoxides the only technological viable option. Excellent conversion results were achieved with a total sodium methoxide concentration of 0.96 g catalyst/100 mL oil, and dosing 50% of the catalyst on each reaction step. Información suministrada por el agente en SIGEVA