Vegetable Oil Deacidification by Amberlyst: Study of the Catalyst Lifetime and a Suitable Reactor Configuration

Ultrasonic free fatty acids esterification in tobacco and canola oil

Ultrasound accelerates the free fatty acids esterification rate by reducing the mass transfer resistance between methanol in the liquid phase and absorbed organic species on Amberlyst®46 catalyst. The reaction rates of canola oil is three times greater than for tobacco seed oil but half the reaction rate of pure oleic acid as measured in a batch reactor. The beneficial effects of ultrasound vs. the conventional approach are more pronounced at lower temperatures (20°C and 40°C vs. 63°C): at 20°C, the free fatty acids conversion reaches 68% vs. 23% with conventional mechanical stirring. The increased conversion is attributed to acoustic cavitation that increases mass transfer in the vicinity of the active sites. The Eley-Rideal kinetic model in which the concentration of the reacting species is expressed taking into account the mass transfer between the phases is in excellent agreement with the experimental data. Ultrasound increases the mass transfer coefficient in the tobacco oil 6 and 4.1 fold at 20°C and 40°C, respectively.

Preservation of carotenes in the deacidification of crude palm oil

Carotenoids in CPO can be preserved during the deacidification processes performed under mild conditions.

Esterification of oleic acid in a three-phase, fixed-bed reactor packed with a cation exchange resin catalyst

Esterification of oleic acid was performed in a three-phase fixed-bed reactor with a cation exchange resin catalyst (Amberlyst-15) at high temperature, which was varied from 80 to 120 °C. The fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) yields in the fixed-bed reactor were increased with increases in the reaction temperature, methanol flow rate and bed height. Moreover, the FAME yields were higher than those obtained using a batch reactor due to an equilibrium shift toward the product that resulted from continuous evaporation of the produced water. In addition, there was no catalyst deactivation during the esterification of oleic acid. However, addition of sunflower oil to the oleic acid reduced the FAME yield obtained from simultaneous esterification and transesterification. The FAME yield was 97.5% at a reaction temperature of 100 °C in the fixed-bed with a height of 5 cm when the methanol and oleic acid feed rates were 8.6 and 9.0 mL/h, respectively.