(85e) Solvents for Oil Extraction and Biodiesel Production

Solvents are used to extract oil from the feedstock for biodiesel production. Appropriate selection of solvents is crucial for maximum oil extraction. This presentation introduces the application of solvent database search techniques and state of the art computer-aided molecular design techniques for solvent selection for oil extraction. A promising approach to convert the extracted oil into biodiesel is to use a co-solvent during transesterification reaction. The co-solvent increases the reaction rate at ambient operating conditions by forming a single phase solution of the reactants. Since the reaction can be carried out at ambient temperature and pressure the energy use for the biodiesel production process is greatly reduced. This presentation also discusses appropriate solvent selection strategies for this process.