Modelling and Parameter Estimation of Enzymatic Biodiesel Synthesis

Abstract The current work addresses the modelling and parameter estimation of the biodiesel synthesis using supported lipases as catalysts. A kinetic reaction model was proposed in order to describe the enzymatic (trans)esterification reaction of vegetable oils and the set of kinetic parameters were numerically estimated with help of the direct search Complex algorithms. The proposed model was evaluated for different experimental conditions, leading to a very suitable prediction of the process data. In summary, the general proposed model is able to predict very well the reaction behavior of biodiesel (BD). Based on the algebraic-differential model performance, the proposed strategy can be successfully used to describe and optimize the biodiesel production through enzymatic reactions performed in batch and semibatch operating mode.