BABAÇU OIL PYROLYSIS (Orbygnia phalerata) FOR RENEWABLE HYDROCARBONS
Babassu, biodiesel, bio-oil, thermogravimetry, kinetic study
Babassu oil can be considered an excellent raw material for the production of renewable hydrocarbons due to its composition, containing significant amounts of short molecular chain saturated acids, mainly composed of lauric (C12: 0) and myristic (C14: 0) acids, same range of fossil kerosene. The main industrial process to obtain biodiesel is the transesterification or alcohololysis of vegetable oils and a short chain alcohol, in the presence of a catalyst, obtaining as biodiesel and glycerine as products. The exact composition of biodiesel will depend on the renewable feedstock and how the transesterification process takes place using methanol or ethanol will produce methyl or ethyl esters respectively. Thus, this work aims to produce biodiesel from babassu oil, analyze the effects of Pd / C on babassu oil and biodiesel by thermogravimetry and kinetic study for subsequent pyrolysis process. To evaluate its viability for biofuels production, specific mass, water content, acidity index, Fourier transform infrared, thermogravimetric analysis and kinetic study techniques were used. The samples of babassu oil bio-oil, babassu biodiesel bio-oil, babassu biodiesel with catalyst and babassu oil with catalyst between 5 and 70% conversion showed R² values above 0.9 showing an adaptation from models to process. Babassu biodiesel had the lowest activation energy ranges (50.96-57.47 KJ / mol for the FWO method and 47.21-52.43 KJ / mol for the KAS method) and can be considered the best bioproduct. for the pyrolysis process.