SLE study of fatty compounds binary mixtures by optical microscopy

Abstract

Fatty compounds, for being the main components of oils and fats, gained great spotlight in the past few years, not only by the demand of the food industry, but also as a source of energy since they can be transformed to biodiesel by transesterification reaction. For these reasons, solid-liquid equilibrium (SLE) of fatty compounds has been studied a lot in the past years. More recently, it was noticed that when fatty acids are mixed with ethanolamines, usually in the proportion of 1:1, protic ionic liquids (IL's) are produced. The IL's are transformed in products of great industrial interest due to their potential application in product formulation and process optimization, which is a result of their properties such as high chemical and thermal stability, high conductivity and low volatility, for instance. One of IL´s application, recently presented in a PhD thesis at FEQ/UNICAMP, was the use for pre-treatment of sugar cane bagasse with the aim of making the production of second-generation ethanol easier. In this case, the IL's were produced through a reaction of acid-base neutralization of a fatty acid with mono or diethanolamine at equimolar proportion. The objective of this Scientific Initiation project is to study all range of compositions of binary mixtures of a short-chain fatty acid with mono or diethanolamine and thus elaborating their SLE diagram.