Immobilized lipase on chitosan beads as catalyst for biodiesel production from Tong oil

To investigate an efficient and cost effective method to catalyze transesterification reaction, the lipase immobilized on chitosan beads was introduced in the present paper with a hypothesis that the immobilized lipase could catalyze transesterification to get a high triglyceride conversion. Four immobilization methods namely cross-linking using glutaraldehyde (GLA), activation with l-Ethyl-3 (3-dimethyl aminopropyl) carbodiimide hydrochloride (EDC), binary method using both GLA and EDC and absorption method were compared. Results showed that lipase immobilized by binary method showed higher catalytic efficiency with 57.4% triglyceride conversion.