New Enzymatic Catalyst For Biodiesel Production By CNRS

A team of French researchers at the CNRS’s Centre de Recherches Paul Pascal (CRPP) has developed a new method for enhancing the production of biodiesels. Biodiesel is one of the biofuels that can be used as an alternative green energy source. With the cost and carbon emissions due to the fossil fuels at an all time high, the consumers and industries are trying to switch to the biofuels. Biodiesels are usually processed from oil containing plants and crops such as sunflower, soybean, coconut, palm, oilseed rape, etc.
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The extracts from these oleaginous plants is subject to a series of chemical reactions that are catalyzed in either an acidic or a basic medium although the basic medium is the commonly used. The medium’s acidity value ranges between a vegetable oil (90%) and an alcohol (10%). The initial process called the transesterification is instrumental in converting the raw mixture into methyl ester and glycerol. Methyl ester is the main chemical compound present in the biodiesel. However, this methyl ester quantity is reduced by a simultaneous side reaction. The side reaction, known as saponification converts the ester into methyl salts thus reducing the total biodiesel output. Such reactions tend to make the biofuels production less efficient thereby increasing the cost of manufacturing. So the chemists and scientists all around the world were in search of a better substitute for the traditionally used catalyst.

The improved catalysis reaction is based on the usage of lipases (triglyceride hydrolases). The chemical agents belonging to the lipase family have an enzymatic action that is very selective as well as efficient. However, the cost of these alternative catalysts is pretty high so their usage wasn’t economical. Plus, they have highly unstable conformity that makes them unfavorable for industrial applications due to lack of good accessibility and enhanced mass transport. However, the chemistry experts at the CNRS led by Dr. Renal Backov have found a solution to these problems. And they have patented their research work and the new methodology for efficient production of the biodiesels. Their work got published in the latest edition of the famous science journal Energy and Environmental Science. In the initial tests, they observed that by creating modified silica-based cellular matrices, they can possibly attain efficient catalysis reaction. This is because of the fact that the matrices are able to confine the lipases for a loner time so that the hydrolysis, esterification and transesterification reactions are completed in a better way and give higher quantities of the desired methyl ester.

Now, after solving this problem, the next barrier in the way of large scale biodiesel production was that this novel method still didn’t offer continuous biofuels production. However, recently, the scientists found a way to overcome this difficulty. They devised a method by which there can be in situ production of the new biocatalyst inside the chromatography column itself. This means that it’s now possible to carry out uninterrupted, continuous, unidirectional flow industrial production of this alternative for the fossil fuels. This is because the biocatalyst levels can be maintained at a fairly high and stable level for large periods of time (approximately two months). The results obtained by this latest way of mass production ere the best till now. Now the next target is reduction of the waste products. Also, the novel technique meets all the current energy and environmental requirements and standards. So let’s hope that this methodology will bring about a paradigm change in the production as well as usage of non conventional fuels.

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