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Biodiesel and renewable diesel production

10 articles

Biodiesel dry washing

Biodiesel dry washing is a water-free purification step in which adsorbents or ion exchange resins remove soaps, glycerol, and other impurities from crude biodiesel, replacing traditional water washing.

Co-processing in FCC units

Co-processing in FCC units is feeding renewable feeds like vegetable oils and bio-oils into existing refinery FCC units with petroleum, adding renewable carbon to fuels.

Ecofining

Ecofining is a catalytic hydroprocessing technology developed by Eni and Honeywell UOP that converts vegetable oils and animal fats into renewable diesel, first used commercially by Diamond Green Diesel in 2013.

Enzymatic transesterification

Enzymatic transesterification is the lipase-catalyzed conversion of oils and fats into biodiesel, offering mild conditions and direct use of waste oils, but limited by high enzyme cost and slower reactions.

Heterogeneous base catalyst

A heterogeneous base catalyst is a solid material, such as calcium oxide, with basic surface sites that converts vegetable oils into biodiesel and can be separated, regenerated, and reused.

Homogeneous base catalysis

Homogeneous base catalysis is a biodiesel production method in which a soluble base catalyst, typically sodium methoxide, NaOH, or KOH, converts oils into fatty acid methyl esters.

Hydrotalcite catalyst

Hydrotalcite catalyst is a layered magnesium–aluminum hydroxide (layered double hydroxide) used as a reusable heterogeneous solid base catalyst, above all for transesterifying vegetable oils and waste fats into biodiesel.

In situ transesterification

In situ transesterification, also called direct transesterification, is a biodiesel production method that converts lipid-bearing biomass such as wet microalgae directly to fatty acid alkyl esters, skipping the separate oil-extraction step.

Novozym 435

Novozym 435 is a commercial immobilized biocatalyst made by Novozymes, consisting of Candida antarctica lipase B on a polyacrylate resin, used widely in biodiesel synthesis.

Supercritical methanol method

The supercritical methanol method, also called the Saka method, is a catalyst-free process for making biodiesel, introduced in 2001 by Shiro Saka and Dadan Kusdiana at Kyoto University.