Efficient ester production process from waste acid oil using ion-exchange resin catalysts Muhammad Sony Setyawan- Kousuke Hiromori- Atsushi Takahashi- Naomi Shibasaki-Kitakawa
Tohoku University
Abstract
The edible oil refinery generates a large amount of fatty acid (FA) with biotoxic, which is a degradation of oil (triglyceride), but there is no effective utilization method to date. One alternative way to upcycle this abundant and cheap resource is to convert it into FAME (fatty acid methyl ester) used as biodiesel by acid-catalyzed esterification. However, it is difficult to obtain high yields due to restriction by the reverse reaction. We reported that complete conversion was achieved in FA esterification using a porous cation-exchange resin catalyst without excess alcohol addition and byproduct water removal. However, the mechanism by which the reverse reaction is suppressed had not been elucidated. In this study, we aimed to clarify the unique phenomenon that occurs in the resin catalyst by investigating where the byproduct water is located.
