Produção de biodiesel pela rota heterogênea empregando catalisadores a base de Zn e Al

• Autor(a) principal: Veiga, Paula Moraes
• Data de Publicação: 2009
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da UERJ
• Texto Completo: http://www.bdtd.uerj.br/handle/1/11940
• topic: Biodiesel; heterogeneous Zn and Al catalysts; transesterification; soybean oil; Biodiesel; catalisadores heterogêneos de Zn e Al; transesterificação; óleo de soja; CNPQ::ENGENHARIAS::ENGENHARIA QUIMICA

Recently the search for renewable energy sources and new technologies for biofuel production have become the aim of several researches. Biodiesel is a biodegradable fuel, derived from renewable sources, and produced in industrial scale, mainly by the transesterification reaction of vegetable oils and/or animal fats with methanol, in the presence of homogeneous catalysts, such as NaOH. However the use of heterogeneous catalysts has been suggested by several authors, due to their great advantages, such as the elimination of separation problems and purification of the products. In the present work, the production of biodiesel from transesterification of soybean oil with methanol, using Zn,Al-mixed oxides as solid basic catalysts, was investigated. The influence of variables such as temperature, concentration of catalyst and methanol/soybean oil molar ratio on biodiesel production was evaluated. The catalysts prepared showed predominantly basic sites and were active for the studied reaction; and the most promising results, presented by the mixed oxide with Al/(Al + Zn) molar ratio = 0.50 obtained by heat treatment at 450°C, showed methyl esters yields of up to 98.5%, under specific conditions. The response surface methodology was used to establish the optimum conditions to maximize methyl esters yield. Reaction temperature of 165oC and catalyst concentration of 5.8 wt% referred to mass of oil using methanol/soybean oil molar ratio limited by 15 were the optimum experimental conditions. This limitation had the goal to guarantee a viable commercial scale