SUPERCRITICAL METHANOL FOR BIODIESELMANUFACTURE

摘要

Conventional processes for making biodiesel fuelgenerally require expensive, high-quality vegetable oils, suchas soybean or rapeseed oil. This is reacted with methanolusing an alkali catalyst. Brent Schulte, a graduate student atthe University of Arkansas, working under Robert Babcockand with others has used supercritical methanol to convert cheap low grade chicken fat and tall oil fatty acid, a byproductof wood pulping, into biodiesel at high yields.