Current industrial biodiesel production utilizes an alkali catalyst that can participate in saponification side reactions.  The side reactions are reduced by using highly refined vegetable oil feedstocks.  Also, the catalyst must be extracted from the final product in a washing step.  A catalyst-free alternative for the production of biodiesel is being developed.  It will involve two reaction steps: 1) triglyceride hydrolysis (fat splitting) at subcritical conditions to separate glycerol from fatty acids, and 2) fatty acid esterification in supercritical methanol to form fatty acid methyl esters.  The catalyst-free process potentially can be used with a variety of low-cost vegetable and animal fats without undesired side reactions.  Esterification experiments were carried out in a batch reaction system to obtain kinetics data.

Two-step biodiesel production using supercritical methanol

239th National Meeting (2010)

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