Produção enzimática de ésteres metílicos a partir de matéria-prima alternativa

Abstract

The consumption of biodiesel in Brazil is growing fast due to the laws that determine the insertion of biodiesel in petroleum of diesel. However, the country does not have a sufficient raw material to supply the demand for the coming years. Therefore, it is necessary to study new raw materials, with low cost and great availability to meet the production, and an attractive possibility is the use of waste. In this way, the objective of this work was to study the variables: temperature; methanol equivalents; percentage of water and additions of methanol in the process of obtaining biodiesel by enzymatic catalysis using alternative raw material (residue from the extraction of soybean oil). Two experimental designs were performed using Statistica software version 7.0 and the results were expressed as a percentage of acidity removal. The results demonstrated that the best response for esterification of fatty acids was 37°C, 2 equivalents of methanol, 3% of water (m/m) and 6 additions of methanol, using as catalyst the enzymatic solution NS-40116 from Novozymes, with mechanical agitation of 200 rpm and reaction time equal to 12 hours. The best result removed 96.15% of the acidity demonstrating that the use of this residual raw material is a viable alternative.