Acid-to-alcohol molar ratios

Recent studies have demonstrated the use of oleic acid as an efficient substrate for production of biodiesel by esterification using lipase. Mulalee et al. (2013) studied the production of biodiesel from oleic acid and bioalcohols (ethanol and butanol) using immobilized lipase (Novozym 435) as biocatalyst in a batch esterification process. The optimal conditions were 45 C, oleic acid to alcohol molar ratio of 1 2, Novozym 435 loading at 5% based on oleic acid weight and 250 rpm, in which the free fatty acid conversion at 91.0% was obtained after 12 hours of the reaction. 

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