Metanólise e etanólise de misturas de óleos vegetais

Abstract

The use of vegetable oils and their derivatives as a source of energy, replacing mainly fossil fuel, brings forth not only a new element to the energetic matrix of a nation, but also new tendencies on economical, social, and environmental issues. Biodiesel can be obtained by different reactions: cracking, esterification or tranesterification. Envisaging the necessity of more knowledge on alternatives to mixtures preparation, in this work the methanolysis and ethanolysis of mixtures of castor oil with soybean oil have been examined with the purpose of assessing the possibility of carrying out transesterification reactions for biodiesel production from oil mixtures. The transesterification of oil mixtures may provide an alternative route to industrial processes of biodiesel production, thus characterizing their versatility and also enabling the biofuel then produced to meet the standard requirements. This possibility opens novel perspectives, especially in the case of castor oil, due to its peculiar physico-chemical features, as mentioned above. The process of transesterification of oily mixtures for the production of biodiesel has proven to be quite viable and promising. In the case of mixtures with castor oil, it could be concluded that there is no appreciable trend to preferably transesterify either soybean or castor oil when methanol ore ethanol are used as alcoholysis agents and the biodiesel thus produced may be more easily purified as compared to the transesterification of pure castor oil. The results presented herein allow for the immediate insertion of castor oil and viabilization of its use as raw material in biodiesel production. Besides, one envisages the possibility of producing biodiesel with tailored, custom-designed characteristics, without the need of a physical mixture step after the production process.