Recovery of oil via acid‐catalyzed transesterification

Abstract

The process of preparing oil palm seed for planting generates vast quantities of waste pulp. The pulp (ca. 80% oil), for which no use has been found, is indiscriminately dumped because either reprocessing it into a useful product or disposing of it properly is expensive. In situ transesterification of the pulp with methanol and ethanol using sulfuric acid as catalyst was carried out on a laboratory scale. Our aim was to develop a process to recover the largely hydrolytically degraded oil (PV, 25-26; FFA, 25-26%) from the pulp. Acid-catalyzed conversions of the oil into alkyl esters were 96-97% for both methanol and ethanol. The accompanying concentrations of FFA, TG, DG, and MG were low. The identities and proportions of FA ester in the alkyl esters reflected the FA content of the palm oil. The values for the esterified products of some fuel properties such as cloud point and viscosity were slightly below the general current specification. However, with optimization of the reaction conditions and simplification of some of the technical aspects, the waste pulp could be a good source of alkyl esters for both oleochemical and fuel applications.Paper no. J10237 in JAOCS 80, 77-80 (January 2003). KEY WORDS:Alkyl esters, oil palm, palm oil, pulp, transesterification. tory funnel was added 200 mL of distilled water. The re-

Simplifying biodiesel production: The direct or in situ transesterification of algal biomass

“…In addition to these and other 5 demonstrations of its suitability for FAME production from sunflower seeds, in situ esterification/transesterification has been successfully applied to cottonseed 6, 7, Jatropha curcas seeds 8, oil palm pulp 9, peanuts (Haas, unpublished), rapeseed/canola 10, 11, rice bran 12–14, soybeans 15, 16, meat and bone meal (a coproduct of edible meat production) 17, distillers dried grains with solubles (a coproduct of ethanol production from corn) 17, municipal sewage sludge 18, and algae 19–23. In fact, there has been no report to date of a lipid‐bearing material from which FAME could not be produced by in situ transesterification.…”

Al2O3-supported alkali and alkali earth metal oxides for transesterification of palm kernel oil and coconut oil

“…Sodium or potassium hydroxides, carbonates or alkoxides are the common base catalysts [5][6][7][8] and the often used acid catalysts are sulfuric and hydrochloric acids [9][10][11]. However, these homogeneous catalysis systems have many drawbacks.…”

Biodiesel Production from Scenedesmus sp. through Optimized in situ Acidic Transesterification Process

“…Hexane (95 % purity, Daejung Co., Ltd, Shi Heung, Korea) were added to the same volume of sum of methanol and sulfuric acid since hexane was proved to be better solvent and most commonly used for in situ transesterfication process. 6,23 The reaction mixture was then heated and maintained at the temperatures of interest for specified periods, and the sample were well-mixed during heating. After the reaction was completed the round bottom flask were allowed to cool to room temperature.…”