Energies 2011, 4(12), 2212-2223; doi:10.3390/en4122212
Article

Biodiesel Production from Acidified Oils via Supercritical Methanol

Jincheng Ding 1,* email, Benqiao He 2 email and Jianxin Li 2 email
1 College of Chemical Engineering, Shandong University of Technology, Zibo 255049, China 2 State Key Laboratory of Hollow Fiber Membrane Materials and Processes, School of Material Science and Engineering, Tianjin Polytechnic University, Tianjin 300160, China
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 7 November 2011; in revised form: 30 November 2011 / Accepted: 6 December 2011 / Published: 14 December 2011
PDF Full-text Download PDF Full-Text [236 KB, uploaded 14 December 2011 11:43 CET]
Abstract: In biodiesel production, the vegetable oil used as raw material for transesterification should be free of water and free fatty acids (FFAs), which may consume catalyst and reduce catalyst efficiency. In this work biodiesel was prepared from acidified oils (AO) through a supercritical methanol route, in which the esterification of FFAs and transesterification of glyceride with methanol occurred simultaneously. The effects of the mass ratio of methanol to AO, the operation temperature as well as the water content on the FFAs conversion and glycerol yield were investigated. The results indicated that the FFAs conversion for esterification under the condition of 1:1 methanol/oil ratio, 310 °C and 15 min reaction time reached 98.7%, and the glycerol yield for transesterification under 0.25:1 methanol/oil ratio, 290 °C and 20 min reaction time reached 63.5% respectively.
Keywords: acidified oils; biodiesel; esterification; supercritical methanol; transesterification

Article Statistics

Click here to load and display the download statistics.

Cite This Article

MDPI and ACS Style

Ding, J.; He, B.; Li, J. Biodiesel Production from Acidified Oils via Supercritical Methanol. Energies 2011, 4, 2212-2223.

AMA Style

Ding J, He B, Li J. Biodiesel Production from Acidified Oils via Supercritical Methanol. Energies. 2011; 4(12):2212-2223.

Chicago/Turabian Style

Ding, Jincheng; He, Benqiao; Li, Jianxin. 2011. "Biodiesel Production from Acidified Oils via Supercritical Methanol." Energies 4, no. 12: 2212-2223.

Energies EISSN 1996-1073 Published by MDPI AG, Basel, Switzerland RSS E-Mail Table of Contents Alert