A review of enzymatic transesterification of microalgal oil-based biodiesel using supercritical technology

Hanifa Taher, Sulaiman Al-Zuhair, Ali H. Al-Marzouqi, Yousef Haik, Mohammed M. Farid

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

101 Scopus citations

Abstract

Biodiesel is considered a promising replacement to petroleum-derived diesel. Using oils extracted from agricultural crops competes with their use as food and cannot realistically satisfy the global demand of diesel-fuel requirements. On the other hand, microalgae, which have a much higher oil yield per hectare, compared to oil crops, appear to be a source that has the potential to completely replace fossil diesel. Microalgae oil extraction is a major step in the overall biodiesel production process. Recently, supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO has been proposed to replace conventional solvent extraction techniques because it is nontoxic, nonhazardous, chemically stable, and inexpensive. It uses environmentally acceptable solvent, which can easily be separated from the products. In addition, the use of SC-COas a reaction media has also been proposed to eliminate the inhibition limitations that encounter biodiesel production reaction using immobilized enzyme as a catalyst. Furthermore, using SC-COallows easy separation of the product. In this paper, conventional biodiesel production with first generation feedstock, using chemical catalysts and solvent-extraction, is compared to new technologies with an emphasis on using microalgae, immobilized lipase, and SC-COas an extraction solvent and reaction media.

Original languageBritish English
Article number468292
JournalEnzyme Research
Volume2011
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 2011

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