Comparison of Novozym 435 and Amberlyst 15 as Heterogeneous Catalyst for Production of Biodiesel from Palm Fatty Acid Distillate

Abstract

Palm fatty acid distillate (PFAD), a byproduct from the palm oil refinery process, has recently been utilized as an alternative feedstock for biodiesel (BD) production via homogeneous acid-catalyzed esterification. This process suffers from catalyst recovery, wastewater treatment, and BD purification. To minimize the problem, heterogeneous catalysts, Novozym 435 (immobilized Candida antarctica lipase B) and Amberlyst 15 (acidic styrene-divinylbenzene sulfonated ion-exchange resin), are tested and their catalytic activities under various reaction conditions are compared. Novozym 435 acts fast and its optimal specific activity (g BD/h/g catalyst) is 50-fold higher than that of Amberlyst 15. The maximum BD yields obtained using Novozym 435 and Amberlyst 15 are 95 and 97%, respectively. Both catalysts are recycled more than 15 cycles without losing their activities. The results suggest that both Novozym 435 and Amberlyst 15 can be effectively used for BD production from PFAD.

Comparison of Novozyme 435 and Purolite D5081 as heterogeneous catalysts for the pretreatment of used cooking oil for biodiesel production

“…As a result alternative raw materials have been investigated and these include non-edible oils such as Jatropha Curacas [8], by-products from oil refining such as palm fatty acid distillate [9], animal fats, algal oil [10] and used cooking oil (UCO) [5,11]. UCO is a waste material and this means that it is possible to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill and use a relatively cheap material.…”

“…It has been shown that Novozyme 435 can be used to catalyse transesterification and hydrolysis reactions for the production of biodiesel however the fastest reaction rates are achieved when Novozyme 435 is used to esterify free fatty acids [24]. The work to date has focused on the esterification of material with a high concentration of free fatty acids such as palm fatty acid distillate which contains more than 93 wt% FFAs [9] and soybean oil deodorizer distillate containing 80 wt% FFAs [25]. To date the use of Novozyme 435 to convert the FFAs in UCO to biodiesel prior to transesterification has not been reported.…”

“…In this case it can be seen there is an optimum methanol to FFA mole ratio in the range of 5.9-6.2:1 with mole ratios below this value suggest there is insufficient methanol for the reaction and increasing the methanol above this range results in a decrease in conversion due to poisoning of the catalyst. Methanol is known to poison enzymes including Novozyme 435 [9,27] and in the case of transesterification where much larger quantities of methanol are required the issue has been mitigated by stepwise addition of methanol. A large reduction in the methanol requirement results in a higher throughput and increased process safety.…”

“…An organic solvent can be used to improve contacting, however this will need to be removed from the final product [9] thus eliminating the process step saving of using a heterogeneous catalyst. External mass transfer resistance refers to the resistance across the solid-liquid interface in heterogeneous catalyst systems due to the formation of a boundary layer around catalyst particles.…”

Valorization of Waste Cooking Oil into Biodiesel over Heteropolyacids Immobilized on Mesoporous Silica — A Kinetic Study

“…However, waste cooking oils contain a high amount of free fatty acids, which is a problem for biodiesel production by the traditional process (homogeneous alkali-catalyzed transesterification) [8,9]. Different solid acids such as resins with sulfonic acid groups [10][11][12][13][14], zeolites [15][16][17], solid super acid catalysts [18] and carbonaceous catalysts [19] have been used as catalysts in the conversion of waste cooking oil containing a high amount of free fatty acids into biodiesel.…”