QUESTION 1

1.1 Chemical Reaction: Transesterification of Waste Fish Oil FEE with KOH as Catalyst
𝐾𝑂𝐻
𝐶8 𝐻18 𝑂 + R-𝐶3 𝐻5 𝑂2 ↔ R-𝐶2 𝐻3 𝑂2 + 𝐶3 𝐻8 𝑂3 (Equation 1)
KOH
2-ethyl-1-hexanol + FEE ↔ biodiesel + glycerol
One of a modern and recent application of a catalyst used in a chemical and biochemical
reaction is in biofuels sector which is transesterification of waste fish oil fatty ethyl esters (FEE) to
produce biodiesel (Peter et. al., 2015). The catalyst used is a base with a commercial name of potassium
hydroxide, (KOH) (A.P. Singh and A.K. Sarma, 2011). KOH is generally appearing as a clear aqueous
solution or a solid with shape of rhombohedral crystalline with 56.1 g/mol of molar mass. The price of
KOH is 2.99 £/kg (Beatriz et. al., 2020) or RM14.30/kg. In transesterification of waste fish oil fatty
ethyl ester process, the reactant involves are 2-ethyl-1-hexanol (EH) and FEE. These reactants will
undergo transesterification with the presence of 5 mol % KOH producing biodiesel as main product and
glycerol as by-product. The reaction equation is shown in Equation 1 above. This reaction occurs in
liquid phase and produce more than 90 % yield in a duration of 2-3 hour (Jilse et. al., 2016) under
operating conditions of 5 mbar to 10 mbar of pressure and 90°C of temperature (Beatriz et. al., 2020).
There are no promoter and catalyst supporter involve in this process. The advantages of chosen KOH
as catalyst is that it requires a short reaction time to achieved high conversion of product, requires low
concentration of catalyst for the reaction and had a low catalyst cost while the disadvantages are, it
requires high temperature and pressure in order to achieve high conversion, this chemical reaction
needed to be purified or undergo pre-treatment for a quality product and KOH is highly sensitive to
fatty acid which will lead to reverse saponification process (Jilse et. al., 2016).

1.2 Biochemical Reaction: Transesterification of Plant-Based Oil with Lipase as Enzyme

Catalyst
𝐶𝐴𝐿𝐵
𝐶𝐻3 𝑂𝐻 + 𝐶𝐻3 (𝐶𝐻2 )𝑛𝐶𝑂𝑂𝐻 ↔ R-𝐶2 𝐻3 𝑂2 + 𝐶3 𝐻8 𝑂3 (Equation 2)
CALB
methanol + FFA ↔ biodiesel + glycerol
A modern and recent application of enzyme in biochemical reaction is enzymatic
transesterification of high free fatty acid contained rubber seed oil for biodiesel. The catalyst used in
this biochemical reaction is an enzyme which is Candida antarctica B lipase (CALB) (Jilse et. al., 2016).
Candida antarctica is most effective lipase usually extracted from yeast and optimized at pH 7 (Norul
et.al., 2016). The crystal structure of CALB is hown in Figure 1 below and it has molecular weight of
33 kDa (Heidi et. al., 2018). The price of CALB is 8.47 £/kg (Beatriz et. al., 2020) or RM40.50/kg. In
this process, the reactant involves are free fatty acid contained rubber seed oil (FFA) and methanol
undergo transesterification process with 10 wt% CALB as enzyme-catalyst, produce biodiesel as main
product and glycerol as by-product as shown in the reaction Equation 2. This reaction occurs in liquid
phase, with water and t-butanol as solvent, with maintain temperature of 37°C and atmospheric pressure
and produce 85 % of production yield within minimum of 24 hours reaction duration (Jilse et. al., 2016).
The advantages of chosen enzyme includes, the enzyme is insensitive to the reactant which reverse
reaction will not occur, this biochemical does not required pre-treatment as the product produced is in
good quality and the addition of solvent improves reaction rate (Jilse et. al., 2016). The disadvantages
of enzyme chosen are the high cost of enzyme, requires long reaction period in order to achieve higher
yield and requires high concentration of enzyme.
 Figure 1: Candida antarctica B lipase (CALB) crystal structure

List of references:

[1] Peter A., Marie-Josée D., Michael N., (2015), Recent trends of biodiesel production from
animal fat wastes and associated production techniques: Renewable and Sustainable Energy
Reviews, 45, pp; 574-588
[2] A.P. Singh Chouhan, A.K. Sarma, (2011), Modern heterogeneous catalysts for biodiesel
production: A comprehensive review: Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 15, pp;
4378-4399
[3] Beatriz A., JoséM F., Laura G. and Clara I. H., (2020), Comparison of Chemical and Enzymatic
Methods for the Transesterification of Waste Fish Oil Fatty Ethyl Esters with Different
Alcohols: ACS Omega 5, pp; 1479−1487
[4] Jilse S., Chandrasekharan M. and Arockiasamy S., (2016), A comparative study between
chemical and enzymatic transesterification of high free fatty acid contained rubber seed oil for
biodiesel production,
[5] Norul N. A. J., Jumat S., Darfizzi D., (2016), Enzymatic Glycerolises of Methyl Laurate
Utilizing Candida antarctica Lipase b: Malaysian Journal of Analytical Sciences, 6. Pp; 1365-
1372