Artigo Acesso aberto Produção Nacional Revisado por pares

High-Quality Biodiesel Production from Buriti (Mauritia flexuosa) Oil Soapstock

2018; Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute; Volume: 24; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3390/molecules24010094

ISSN

1433-1373

Autores

Samantha Siqueira Pantoja, Vanessa Albuquerque de Mescouto, Carlos Emmerson Ferreira da Costa, José Roberto Zamian, Geraldo Narciso da Rocha Filho, Luís Adriano Santos do Nascimento,

Tópico(s)

Lubricants and Their Additives

Resumo

The buriti palm (Mauritia flexuosa) is a palm tree widely distributed throughout tropical South America. The oil extracted from the fruits of this palm tree is rich in natural antioxidants. The by-products obtained from the buriti palm have social and economic importance as well, hence the interest in adding value to the residue left from refining this oil to obtain biofuel. The process of methyl esters production from the buriti oil soapstock was optimized considering acidulation and esterification. The effect of the molar ratio of sulfuric acid (H₂SO₄) to soapstock in the range from 0.6 to 1.0 and the reaction time (30⁻90 min) were analyzed. The best conditions for acidulation were molar ratio 0.8 and reaction time of 60 min. Next, the esterification of the fatty acids obtained was performed using methanol and H₂SO₄ as catalyst. The effects of the molar ratio (9:1⁻27:1), percentage of catalyst (2⁻6%) and reaction time (1⁻14 h) were investigated. The best reaction conditions were: 18:1 molar ratio, 4% catalyst and 14 h reaction time, which resulted in a yield of 92% and a conversion of 99.9%. All the key biodiesel physicochemical characterizations were within the parameters established by the Brazilian standard. The biodiesel obtained presented high ester content (96.6%) and oxidative stability (16.1 h).

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