Produção de biodiesel a partir do óleo extraído da borra do café pela rota supercrítica

Abstract

Over time human groupings have become more and more dependent on energy resources, associated with this, the threat of depletion of fossil fuel sources and conflicts involving the use of oil completes the ideal scenario for investigating alternative ways of producing energy. Biodiesel production is highlighted, at the national level, a biofuel commonly added to petroleum diesel that may be generated, among other raw materials, from materials destined initially for disposal. It is known that the excellent performance of fuel is directly related to the quality of the inputs used. From this perspective, this work aimed at extracting oil from coffee grounds using hexane as a solvent in a oil and fat extractor, characterizing it through gas chromatography tests, density, acidity, saponification index, ashes, and humidity, in addition to subjecting it to conversion to biodiesel using supercritical ethanol in a continuous tubular reactor at 240, 260, 280 and 320°C temperatures to check, finally, which are the best yields obtained. The oil showed promising physicochemical characteristics for this purpose and a yield of 56.21% in esters was reached at a temperature of 320°C.