A Review on Bio-Based Catalysts (Immobilized Enzymes) Used for Biodiesel Production

Samuel Santos, Jaime Puna and João Gomes
Additional contact information
Samuel Santos: CERENA—Center for Natural Resources, Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon University, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal
Jaime Puna: CERENA—Center for Natural Resources, Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon University, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal
João Gomes: CERENA—Center for Natural Resources, Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon University, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 11, 1-19

Abstract: The continuous increase of the world’s population results in an increased demand for energy drastically from the industrial and domestic sectors as well. Moreover, the current public awareness regarding issues such as pollution and overuse of petroleum fuel has resulted in the development of research approaches concerning alternative renewable energy sources. Amongst the various options for renewable energies used in transportation systems, biodiesel is considered the most suitable replacement for fossil-based diesel. In what concerns the industrial application for biodiesel production, homogeneous catalysts such as sodium hydroxide, potassium hydroxide, sulfuric acid, and hydrochloric acid are usually selected, but their removal after reaction could prove to be rather complex and sometimes polluting, resulting in increases on the production costs. Therefore, there is an open field for research on new catalysts regarding biodiesel production, which can comprise heterogeneous catalysts. Apart from that, there are other alternatives to these chemical catalysts. Enzymatic catalysts have also been used in biodiesel production by employing lipases as biocatalysts. For economic reasons, and reusability and recycling, the lipases urged to be immobilized on suitable supports, thus the concept of heterogeneous biocatalysis comes in existence. Just like other heterogeneous catalytic materials, this one also presents similar issues with inefficiency and mass-transfer limitations. A solution to overcome the said limitations can be to consider the use of nanostructures to support enzyme immobilization, thus obtaining new heterogeneous biocatalysts. This review mainly focuses on the application of enzymatic catalysts as well as nano(bio)catalysts in transesterification reaction and their multiple methods of synthesis.

Keywords: biodiesel production; transesterification; enzymatic catalysis; immobilization of enzymes; biocatalyst; nano(bio)catalyst (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/11/3013/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/11/3013/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:13:y:2020:i:11:p:3013-:d:370279

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().