Produção sustentável do biodiesel de óleo e gordura residual: estudo comparativo do processo de purificação do biodiesel com água e adsorventes sintéticos

Abstract

Contributions to a sustainable development ought to focus in the following three foci: environmental, economic and social . The usage of oil, animal and vegetable fats in food has grown in recent decades. Therefore conseq uently, the generation of residual oils and fats (OGR) turned into environmental problems, due to the lack of information, awareness and/or different interests of governments and private institutions in the implementation of collection programs and proper disposals of the aforesaid wastes for the processing into quality recycled products. The biodiesel industry is a good option to market to the use of the OGR produced in household residences and commercial establishments in the major urban centers. The rese arch aimed in this present proposal for the sustainable production of biodiesel from the waste oils and the frying fats, is to make a comparative study of the purification (washing) in the biodiesel with the process of water and synthetics adsorbents. This particular said purification process of the biodiesel with water and treated adsorbents, were effective in removing impurities, such as soap and free glycerin moisture, contained in the neutralized OGR's with over 99% reduction in the impurities under suc h conditions for an optimized process. The bioOGR's and the bioOGR blended with the biodiesel from the castor (bioM100), as well as the diesel oil (D95_B5), were used to fuel stationary diesel engine cycles and measure the level of opacity in the fuel exh aust gases, tested to determine the coefficient of the light absorption (opacity). All the fuels did have a opacity level below 0.5 m - 1 , which is the maximum set required by the Brazilian laws. The identification of the composing OGR's by the gas chromato graphy of the fatty acids, duly obtained from the average composition of unsaturated fatty of the acids 76.0 ± 2.38 (51.1 ± 1.28% of polyunsaturated and 24.9 ± 1.10% monounsaturated) and a lesser contribution of the saturated fatty acids with an average of 23.6 ± 0.83%. Regarding the effluents generated in the bioOGR's washing with the water, this stated characterization determined its physic - chemical parameters, where the average was 21,248.0±67.3 mg O 2 /L for the chemical oxygen demand and the 2,543.0±2.9 3 NTU being checked for the turbidity, while 10.3 ± 0.53 was for the pH and the 453.7 ± 4.30 μS/cm was for the electric conductivity in the effluent from the first wash of the bioOGR.