Sterol glycosides occur naturally in vegetable oils, mainly as soluble fatty acid esters. It hydrolyzed during the transesterification process and became insoluble.
Precipitate causes of problems in engines using biodiesel as fuel will clog the plugging filter so that fuel cannot get through and the distribution of fuel in the engine is affected.
What can we do with sterol glycosides resulted from the transesterification process of vegetable oil in the productoin of methyl ester/biodiesel? Other than filter it off and dispose as scheduled waste? Or how can one avoid formation of sterol glycosides from the transesterification process of vegetable oil using methanol and sodium methylate solution?
Dr. Tang,
Separating sterol glycosides is expensive. It should be better if you can try to use catalysts during transesterification process to lower the selectivity of sterol glycosides production.
Good luck!
Maohong Fan
You can go for mild saponification procedure (lipid heating for 30 min at 45 deg c followed by addition of methanol: 20 N NaOH (19:1 v/v); addition of 2:1 chlorofom:water or base-catalyzed transesterification
(Hexane, 2 M methanolic KOH) in order to avoid inclusion of sterol glycosides in the transesterified products,
Dear Sook Wah Tang, in Argentina we developed a termostable enzyme that efficiently hydrolysis Sterylglucosides. Biodiesel with Total contamination of 60ppm could be clean to less than 1 one ppm.
With this treatment, clean biodiesel passes all the tests, like csFBT, CSFT, FBT, CT.
The process is cheap, clean and do not have losses.
Article An industrial scale process for the enzymatic removal of ste...
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