17790: Preliminary Development of Enzyme Biosensor for Determination of Free Fatty Acids

The quality of biodiesel can vary depending on the molecular structures of esters constituents or due to contaminants from the raw material, manufacturing process or formed during storage of biodiesel. So this work aims at developing a preliminary enzymatic biosensor for quantification of free fatty acids that allows more direct monitoring of the quality of even a simple, quick, cheap and specific. This is made possible since the biosensors these are a class of instruments whose main advantages, its high specificity, since it has the ability to combine the specificity of an active biological component to the analyte of interest with a sensitivity of transducer capable of converting the biological signal into an electrical signal proportional to the concentration of the analyte analyzed. Beyond that, it is able to provide rapid results, ease of data processing, analysis provide a low cost and, in most cases, a portable instrument. To perform work has been used since the enzyme extract from Aspergillus niger to evaluate the efficiency of esterase or lipase activity was applied to samples of biodiesel, as well as in samples of vegetable oils used in its production, together with an electrode for a non-aqueous brand Metrohm. The lipase enzyme extract from Aspergillus niger was tested in free and showed a good performance for potentiometric detection of triglycerides in oils and biodiesel. Therefore, showed favorable for application in the future development of an enzyme biosensor for determination of free acids in samples of biodiesel.