This work investigated the effect of temperature on the reaction efficiency of soybean oil transesterification in supercritical ethanol in a continuous catalyst-free process under different water concentrations and at varying substrate flow rates. Experiments were performed in the temperature range from 250 to 325 °C, at 20 MPa, with an oil to ethanol molar ratio of 1:40. Results showed that temperature and substrate flow rates strongly affected the reaction conversion to fatty acid ethyl esters, decomposition, and trans-isomerization of unsaturated fatty acids, mainly for C18:2 and C18:3. It is shown that the synthesis of esters was favored by the addition of water to the reaction medium and the degradation phenomenon decreased as water concentration increased from 0 to 10 wt %.

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