Investigation of the transesterification efficiency of different immobilized lipase enzymes

• Main Authors: Sándor Kovács, Jenő Hancsók
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: antartic*
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.507.9229; http://www.aidic.it/icheap9/webpapers/424Kovacs.pdf

The alkaline catalyzed transesterification has several disadvantages. The aim of our experiments was to eliminate these problems and to investigate the possibilities of the enzyme catalyzed transesterification of Hungarian, appropriately pre-treated rapeseed oil. Transesterification efficiencies of three commercially available immobilized lipases (Candida antartica (Novozym 435), Rhizomucor miehei (Lipozyme RM IM) and Thermomyces lanuginosus (Lipozyme TL IM)) were investigated (temperature: 30-70°C, methanol:triglyceride molar ratio: 4:1, amount of catalyst: 6-12 % based on the amount of the total reaction mixture, methanol feed: more than 1 portions). Based on the properties of the products we established that yields of the methyl ester phases and their methyl ester contents were significantly different in case of the applied lipase enzymes. The highest product yields (97.4-98.5 % of the theoretical value) and methyl ester content (>98%) were achieved by the application of Candida antartica (Novozym 435). The quality properties – except the CFPP values – of these biodiesels satisfied the requirements of the EN 14214:2003 standard. 1.