0000000000147870
AUTHOR
Leonardo Interrante
Interesterification of rapeseed oil catalysed by a low surface area tin (II) oxide heterogeneous catalyst
Abstract The interesterification of rapeseed oil was performed in a batch reactor using for the first time low surface area massive tin(II) oxide as heterogeneous catalyst and methyl acetate as acyl acceptor. The effect of reaction temperature, methyl acetate to oil molar ratio and catalyst loading on the performances of the process were investigated. Yields in fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs) and triacetin (TA) up to 90% and 70% respectively, were achieved after 4 h of reaction time at 483 K in the presence of 0.69 mol of SnO per mole of rapeseed oil using a methyl acetate to oil molar ratio of 40. Quite interestingly, the catalyst performances improved when water was added to the reaction…
Autohydrolysis pretreatment of Arundo donax: a comparison between microwave-assisted batch and fast heating rate flow-through reaction systems
Background: Autohydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass in liquid hot water has been widely studied owing to its high efficiency and relatively low cost. In the perspective of industrial applications, continuous or semi-continuous processes are more interesting than batch systems. Moreover, microwave heating of pretreatment systems has been proposed to intensify the kinetics of the process. In this study, the autohydrolysis of Arundo donax was performed in pure liquid hot water using a microwave-heated batch reactor and a semi-continuous flow-through reaction system with fast heating rate at the same operating conditions with the aim of performing a systematic comparison between the two diffe…
Robust Mesoporous CoMo/γ-Al2O3 Catalysts from Cyclodextrin-Based Supramolecular Assemblies for Hydrothermal Processing of Microalgae: Effect of the Preparation Method
Hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) is a promising technology for the production of biocrude oil from microalgae. Although this catalyst-free technology is efficient under high-temperature and high-pressure conditions, the biocrude yield and quality can be further improved by using heterogeneous catalysts. The design of robust catalysts that preserve their performance under hydrothermal conditions will be therefore very important in the development of biorefinery technologies. In this work, we describe two different synthetic routes (i.e., impregnation and cyclodextrin-assisted one-pot colloidal approach), for the preparation in aqueous phase of six high surface area CoMo/γ-Al2O3 catalysts. Cat…