Lipase Catalyzed Production of Biodiesel

Lipase catalyzed of biodiesel is expensive which restricted industrial enzymatic biodiesel production. In this paper, the industrial lipase made in China was used as catalyst to catalyze the transesterification of rapeseed oil with methanol to produce biodiesel. The way of methanol feeding, the amount of lipase, the reaction temperature, the reaction time, the molar ratio of methanol to oil, the organic solvent content were investigated respectively. The results indicated that under this condition ,the reaction temperature 45°C and lipase amount 3% (by the weight of the oil), the molar ratio of methanol to oil 2:1, the molar ratio of n-Hexane to rapeseed oil 1:1, and methanol was continuously added, after 40 hours´ reaction, the maximum methyl esters yield was over 72.5%.