Vegetable oils are a renewable energy resource and the current interest has been concentrated on fatty acid methyl esters production. The continuation of research includes the use of ethanol since this alcohol can be produced from agricultural renewable resources, reinforcing the independency from fossil fuels. This investigation takes into consideration both the reactants and the process system at the optimized conditions. Thus, new catalysts and environmentally benign processes may lead to ethyl ester production with improved properties at competitive costs since the economic viability of ethyl esters production would be competitive to methyl esters and further to regular diesel. In this study, transesterification of used frying oil to biodiesel using tetramethylguanidine as a strong base catalyst was conducted. The influence of catalyst concentration and of certain physicochemical properties of waste frying oil was investigated. Experiments were also performed on a semi-refined cottonseed oil for comparison purposes. Experimental results showed that ethyl ester conversion was dependent on the type of oil, catalyst concentration and ethanol to oil molar ratio. The evaluation of processing was favorable due to the less soap formation, revealing the superior behavior of the selected catalyst, attributing to a satisfactory ester and mass yield. Nowadays, it is of interest the exploitation of renewable resources having as a paramount target a better air quality.

Tetramethylguanidine: Catalyzed transesterification for fatty acid ethyl esters (FAEE) production

246th National Meeting (2013)

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