Levantamento e proposta de metodologia para identificação dos produtos de glicerol e etanol

• Autor(a) principal: Silva, Fernanda Lima Rei Ramos e
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Tipo de documento: Trabalho de conclusão de curso
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFRN
• Texto Completo: https://repositorio.ufrn.br/handle/123456789/38326
• topic: Glicerina; Etanol; Eterificação; Cromatografia; CNPQ::CIENCIAS EXATAS E DA TERRA::QUIMICA

Glycerol is a by¬-product in the manufacture of biodiesel by transesterification of triglycerides with alcohols, such as methanol or ethanol. The rapid expansion of biodiesel demand worldwide is creating a significant increase in the glycerine market offer, unavoidably accompanied by an alteration of the cost of this polyol. Aiming for the optimization of the biodiesel production process, improving its economics and environmental benefits, new processes based on the use of glycerol as a starting material were recently developed. Among them, etherification of glycerol has been seen to be promising, since it converts glycerol into more value-added material, such as monoalkyl glyceryl ethers (MAGEs). Keeping in mind a route as green as possible, ethanol is a good candidate to be used as the alcohol for the etherification reaction, because of its possible production from biomass fermentation. However, in order to improve this process, especially concerning the reaction yield, it is necessary to overcome the identification problem regarding both reagents and products in question. Thus, this paper aims to propose a methodolody for identifying both the products and reagents of the etherification reaction between glycerol and ethanol. To accomplish this, chromatographic analysis of glycerol and 1-ethoxypropane standards were performed. 1-ethoxypropane was used due to the unavailability of mono-ethoxypropanediol in the Brazilian market. The High Performance Liquid Chromatography technique, which uses a Diode Array Detector (DAD), was able to identify both compounds with the applied method. However, it would not be possible to quantify the yield of the etherification reaction, since both samples showed a retention time of about 3 minutes and, therefore, separation would not occur. In the meantime, the applied method for the gas chromatography-mass spectrometry technique was able to identify glycerol only. Nonetheless, the greater proximity between the boiling points of glycerol and mono-ethoxypropanediol (290ºC e 222ºC, respectively), which could not be analysed, it is possible that this method would be able to separate these species. Thus, the GC-MS method would be suitable to quantify the yield of the etherification reaction between glycerol and ethanol.