Melon seed oil utilization for biodiesel production and analysis of liquid-liquid equilibrium for the system biodiesel plus methanol plus glycerin

In the present study, seeds from yellow melon (Cucumis melo l.), considered an industrial and domestic waste, were used as an oleaginous source to produce biodiesel by transesterification reaction in methanol and due to the importance and the lack of data, a study of phase equilibrium of the system biodiesel+methanol+glycerin was also conducted. The mean molecular mass the theoretical mass of biodiesel, and the conversion rate of the reaction were calculated. For the liquid-liquid study, Othmer-Tobias and Hand correlations were applied to evaluate the data reliability of the tie-lines and the NRTL and UNIQUAC models were used to predict the phase equilibrium. The results showed that oil from melon seeds could be a new alternative for the production of biodiesel, with a conversion rate close to 85%. The equilibrium data showed that the biodiesel obtained from melon seeds oil presented advantage in the production process, since the biodiesel is easily separated from the methanol and glycerol in the separation step, avoiding additional costs with steps of purification. Among the models evaluated, better agreement in the results was observed when NRTL was used (s.d.=1.25%), followed by UNIQUAC model (s.d. 2.70%). (c) 2016 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 36: 325-332, 2017