Produção de ésteres metílicos através do óleo de macaúba (Acrocomia aculeata)

Abstract

Due to the increasing oil consumption in the world and because it is a finite and polluting energy, new sources of clean and renewable energy have been sought, such as biodiesel. Biodiesel can be obtained through various vegetable oils, one of which is macaúba oil. The great difficulty in the production of biodiesel from the crude oil of the macaúba pulp is its large amount of free fatty acids, which makes the use of homogeneous alkaline catalysts unfeasible. Thus, heterogeneous catalysts can be used to substitute the homogeneous catalysts. The present work had as objective the production of methyl esters of fatty acids from the oil of macaúba pulp (Acrocomia aculeata) using heterogeneous catalyst in order to accelerate the reaction. The reaction conditions were evaluated using an experimental design and the fatty acid methyl esters obtained from a continuous temperature controlled reactor were quantified by gas chromatography by appropriate methodology and using methyl heptadecanoate as the internal standard. The experimental condition using 10,5 g of Amberlyst®15 catalyst, 1:15 molar ratio of oil: methanol, 110°C and feed flow of the oil: methanol solution of 1.0 mL.min-1 was the best condition showing content of esters of 43.31%.