Currently, energy generation based on fossil fuels is producing negative environmental impacts; two of the main symptoms of these impacts are water pollution and climate change. Consequently, the search for new technologies to satisfy the energy demand must have the goal to minimise possible impacts to the environment. There are alternatives with biofuels and, among them, biodiesel. The cheapest reaction pathway for biodiesel production is the transesterification of triglycerides by methanol in the presence of sodium hydroxide; however, this option can contaminate large volumes of water used in the final leach of the biodiesel product. Therefore, a feasible way of producing this biofuel while simultaneously minimising leaching water will be environmentally friendly and will improve economical savings. The present study developed an experimental design in order to minimise the addition of NaOH during biodiesel production by the basic homogeneous pathway. The best operating conditions were 46 °C, methanol in situ 7.5% v/v and NaOH 0.035 M. These conditions allowed to reduce the leaching water amount by 25% compared to techniques reported in the literature; however, the yield to biodiesel decreased from 98 wt.% to 87 wt.% when a model waste oil was used instead of virgin oil.
Over 40% of global energy-related CO2 emissions are due to the combustion of fossil fuels for electric energy generation. Albeit CO2 capture and storage have been identified as promissory actions to mitigate its emissions, the problem separating N2 and CO2 remains. A very effective solution for the former problem is to obtain the combustion CO2 as a pure molecule, which is possible using the Chemical Looping Combustion (CLC) technology, which uses a solid oxygen carrier to transport the oxygen from an oxidating media (regeneration reactor) to a reducing media (combustion reactor). One of the key issues to apply CLC is to find or develop some material, suitable from the kinetic and thermodynamic points of view, for the reduction-oxidation cycles taking place inside combustion and regenerator reactors. The evaluation of “oxygen carrier” candidates for CLC is based on reactivity (rates and conversions), resistance to carbon accumulation, and “regenerability”, which means the ability of the material for cyclic reduction and oxidation. Another challenging issue to use CLC processes is the loss of oxygen carrier; this problem involves the use of supported metals on materials, such as zirconia, Al2O3, etc. Preparation of this kind of supported carriers requires time, money, and equipment. Meanwhile, the natural mineral ore named ilmenite, which consists of a mixture of iron and titanium oxides, and do not need to be supported, has been seen as promising to increase CLC efficiency as oxygen carrier. In this work, the performance of ilmenite is compared with some other oxygen carriers used in CLC.
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