Monday, April 29, 2013
Exhibit Hall
The transesterification reaction of babassu oil with ethanol mediated by Burkholderia cepacia lipase immobilized on silica-PVA composite was assessed on a packed bed reactor running on continuous mode. Experiments were carried out in a solvent free system at 50°C. The performance of the reactor (15 mm x 210 mm) was evaluated for substrates composed by babassu oil and ethanol in two molar ratios (1:7 e 1:12), determining its operation limits in terms of substrate flow rate. The system performance was quantified for four different flow rates corresponded to space times between 7 and 13 h. For each condition, the influence of the space time in the ethyl esters formation, transesterification yield and productivity was determined. The molar ratio oil to ethanol interfered, in a remarkable way, the conversion of babassu oil into the correspondent ethyl esters and the system was optimized for the molar ratio of 1:12. Under this condition for space times higher than 11h, transesterification yields of 95.0 ± 4.6 % and productivities of 54.8 ± 2.7 mgesters.gmedium-1.h-1 were obtained. The immobilized lipase was found to be stable regarding its morphological and catalytic characteristics, showing half-life time of 40 days.