Bacterial Cellulose and Biodegradable Superbase for Heterogeneous Transesterification to Alkyl Esters

Abstract

Heterogeneous catalysts, basic, acidic or bifunctional, can catalyze transesterification reactions where the raw material has a significant content of FFA fatty acids, such as used cooking oils or other lipid-based residues, which do not have the purity required for homogeneous catalysis, in which case the purity of the triglycerides above 99.5% is the first condition for the initiation of the reaction, to avoid saponification. In this work, a green supported catalyst was developed, using bacterial cellulose as catalytic support and biodegradable superbase as a chemical compound, for transesterification reaction to obtain alkyl esters, yielding over 99% of its content at 70 °C temperature and 7.5% catalyst loading (1.5/20 w/w catalyst:oil). A Plackett-–Burman design was used for screening experiments to explore the main effect in terms of catalytic activity and performance of the triglyceride conversion reaction.