Lipase NS40116 as catalyst for enzymatic transesterification of abdominal chicken fat as substrate

Abstract Enzymatic biodiesel, as an alternative biodiesel obtained by chemical route and alternative to petroleum fuel, becomes attractive by using low-cost raw materials such as abdominal chicken fat and low-cost free enzyme as catalyst. In this sense, the main goal of this work was to optimize enzymatic biodiesel synthesis to obtain high methyl esters content from abdominal chicken fat by using free NS 40116 lipase as a catalyst in a solvent-free system. Kinetics studies were carried out to investigate the influence of enzyme in relation to water content (0.0–2.0 wt%), NS 40116 concentration (0.1–0.7%), temperature (30–45 °C), molar ratio oil to ethanol (1:3–1:6) and different additions of methanol (1–6 shots). Under optimized conditions of reaction, 77% of conversion was obtained using 0.3 wt% NS 40116, 2 wt% water, 1:4.5 molar ratio oil to methanol (3 shots), 30 °C and 250 rpm in 24 h.