Preparation of Biocatalyst by Immobilization of Eversa on Chitosan Beads for Production of Biodiesel from Palm Oil

Biodiesels or fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs), which are derived from triglycerides by trans-esterification with methanol, have attracted considerable attention during the past decade as a renewable, biodegradable, and nontoxic fuels [1]. Enzymatic production of biodiesel has been considered a promising alternative since the early 1990s in the scientific community. Recently, however, this potential can been realized with the official launches of Novozymes Eversa Transform in Dec 2014, followed by the more thermostable enzyme, Eversa Transform 2.0 in May 2016. Eversa Transform 2.0 (Genetically modified Aspergillus oryzae lipase) is a free liquid lipase, with properties developed for the specific use in biodiesel application [2]. In this study, enzymatic production of biodiesel was performed from reaction of palm oil and methanol by using immobilized Eversa (as a biocatalyst) on chitosan beads by three component reaction. Chitosan, a deacetylated form of chitin, is one of the natural polymers which was used in bead shape as support. The Eversa loading on the support was about 231 mg/g under the optimum conditions (pH 7, 24 h). Also it was found, t-butanol as a co-solvent was affected on reaction yield. The influences of six principal variables, molar ratio of methanol to oil, weight percent of biocatalyst to oil, t-butanol to oil, temperature and time of reaction, on the yield of biodiesel reaction were investigated. Finally the optimum condition was found at 3:1, 19.5%, 10% (w/w), 50ºC and 48 hours respectively.