Chemical and Biological Investigation of Organic Wastes of Frying Oils and Beef Fats: Valorization for Biodiesel Production

Abstract

The present study investigates the different approaches of biodiesel production by exploiting low cost feedstocks such as organic wastes of frying oils (WFO) and wastes of beef fats (WBF). The aim was to compare not only two different sources of waste raw materials but also different approaches of biodiesel production. Biodiesel which refers to fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) was produced by both chemical and enzymatic transesterification. The characterization of the biodiesel produced by both approaches was performed according to the European standard EN 14214. The results showed that the biological method gave a richer FAME biodiesel through the catalysis of whole-cell lipase. However, for the chemical method, better biodiesel physicochemical properties were observed for the two raw materials. Therefore, it would be interesting to compromise by optimizing the biological biodiesel production approach in order to obtain a better quality in coherence with EN 14214 requirements.