Effect of Temperature on the Continuous Synthesis of Soybean Esters under Supercritical Ethanol

This work investigated the effect of temperature on the reaction efficiency of soybean oil transesterification in supercritical ethanol in a continuous catalyst-free process under different water concentrations and at varying substrate flow rates. Experiments were performed in the temperature range from 250 to 325 °C, at 20 MPa, with an oil to ethanol molar ratio of 1:40. Results showed that temperature and substrate flow rates strongly affected the reaction conversion to fatty acid ethyl esters, decomposition, and trans-isomerization of unsaturated fatty acids, mainly for C18:2 and C18:3. It is shown that the synthesis of esters was favored by the addition of water to the reaction medium and the degradation phenomenon decreased as water concentration increased from 0 to 10 wt %.