Caracterização da água de lavagem proveniente da purificação do biodiesel.

Abstract

In the early 2000's it was observed an increase in the greenhouse effect, due to high levels of carbon dioxide emitted by burning fossil fuels, a fact that has concerned to climate change and affecting the entire world population. Government and scientist have established the use of biofuels as a renewable energy source with less environmental impact. However, the traditional transesterification and washing methodology to produce biodiesel use 3 liters of water for every liter of synthesized biodiesel. Thus, this study aimed develop and optimize methodologies to determine physical-chemical parameters of the water from washing of the produced biodiesel from the transesterification of soybean oil and frying oil with ethanol. The identification of esters present in this washing water was made by gas chromatography. Turbidity, pH, Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) and the concentration of oils and fatty were also determined. The characterization of water for washing Biodiesels obtained from soybean oil and frying oil were carried out at the Laboratory of Fuel and Materials - LACOM, the Laboratory for Research on Environmental Chemistry - LEQA and Experiment Station Biological Treatment of Sewage (EXTRABES).