Non-catalytic production of fatty acid ethyl esters from soybean oil with supercritical ethanol in a two-step process using a microtube reactor

This work reports the production of fatty acid ethyl esters (FAEE) from the transesterification of soybean oil in supercritical ethanol in a continuous catalyst-free process using different reactor configurations. Experiments were performed in a microtube reactor with experimental simulation of two reactors operated in series and a reactor with recycle, both configurations at a constant temperature of 573 K, pressure of 20 MPa and oil to ethanol mass ratio of 1:1. Results show that the configurations studied with intermediate separation of glycerol afford higher conversions of vegetable oil to its fatty acid ethyl ester derivatives when compared to the one-step reaction, with relatively low decomposition of fatty acids (<3.0 wt%).