Current Trends in Separation and Purification of Fatty Acid Methyl Ester

摘要

In a recent scenario, fatty acide methyl esters (FAMEs) as sustainable, biodegradable, and clean energy has attracted, worldwide, renewed, and growing interest nowadays, chiefly due to development in FAME fuel and ecological pressures that include climatic changes. In the manufacturing of FAME from biomass, separation, and purification of FAME is a most important aspect. As per Traditional technologies used for FAME separation such as gravitational settling, decantation, filtration, and FAME purification such as water washing, acid washing, washing with ether and absorbents have proven to be not efficient, time and energy consumptive, and less cost effective. The involvement of membrane reactor and preparative membrane proves more advantageous for the separation and purification of FAME. In this article, both traditional and most recent membrane technologies used in refining FAME have been critically reviewed. Activated carbons prepared from, e.g., spent tea waste were used for the purification of crude FAME produced from waste cooking oil through base-catalyzed transesterification. For comparison, silica gel and water washing were also used for the same purpose. The study showed that the use of activated carbons for FAME purification resulted in higher yields and better fuel properties compared to all other methods.