The use of ionic liquids (IL) for the production of biodiesel from cottonseed oils

TALAVERA PRIETO, NIEVES M. C.; FERREIRA, ABEL G. M.; PORTUGAL, ANTÓNIO ALBERTO

Conferencia; Energy for Sustainability; 2013

ITECons

In the last decades the depletion of fossil fuels and the consequent increase in their prices has motivated a broad interest in the development of new energy alternatives. Moreover, the intensive use of petroleum fuels is an important factor in the air pollution and global warming, being necessary to take measures to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. Theuse of alternative energy is a practical way to deal with such situations. In this work we studied the production of biodiesel from cottonseed oil using anionic liquid medium. Two different processes for the production of biodiesel were compared: the traditional alkaline transesterification and an alternative procedure involving an IL based on 1-n-butyl-3-methylimidazolium-bis-(trifluoromethylsulfonyl) imide (BMI-NTf2) under basic conditions as reaction medium. The two processes were compared in terms of conversion of the produced biodiesel by means of gas chromatography (GC) and nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR).