Mônica C. G. Albuquerque
Federal University of Ceará, Brazil
Title: Esterification of fatty acids from Babassu oil to produce aviation biofuel
Biography
Biography: Mônica C. G. Albuquerque
Abstract
In this work aviation biofuel production was studied by fatty acids (C6 to C16) esterification. The process variables in heterogeneous catalysis were evaluated using an experimental design. Temperature and reaction time were the studied parameters, and the methyl esters content was response of the experimental design. An ion exchange resin was used as a heterogeneous catalyst. The process optimization was carried out using response surface methodology (RSM) and polynomial model of second order. Results show that the most influential variables on the linear coefficient of each effect studied were temperature and reaction time. The best result of methyl esters conversion in the experimental design was under the conditions: 10% wt of catalyst; 100 °C and 4 hours of reaction. The best achieved conversion was 96.5% wt of biofuel.