Efficient biodiesel production from phospholipids-containing oil: Synchronous catalysis with phospholipase and lipase

• Biodiesel production from oil with high content of phospholipids was studied.
• A novel synchronous catalysis together with phospholipase and lipase was developed.
• The inhibitory effect of phospholipids was eliminated by the synchronous catalysis.
• The final biodiesel product can meet the phosphorus demand of EN14214 standard.
• The two enzymes showed good stability during the repeated uses.

Recently, the use of low quality oils as potential alternative oil feedstock for biodiesel production has become more and more attractive, which provides a feasible solution to reduce the cost of biodiesel production. However, in the low quality oils, expect triglycerides, other lipids represented by phospholipids also exist. It was found that the presence of phospholipids showed adverse effect on enzyme catalyzed biodiesel production. Therefore, it is necessary to develop an effective method for the conversion of phospholipids-containing oils. In recent years, the employment of free lipase in catalyzing biodiesel from refined oils has received great attentions due to its advantages of lower cost and faster reaction rate. To further promote its application in efficient conversion of phospholipids-containing oils, a synchronous catalysis together with phospholipase and lipase for biodiesel production from phospholipids-containing oils was developed. A high FAME yield of 94.9% can be obtained even with 10% phospholipids contained in the oil feedstock. Further study showed that the biodiesel product could also meet the phosphorus demand of EN14214 standard. Moreover, the good reuse stability of the two enzymes further indicates that the combination catalysis of phospholipase and lipase is very promising for biodiesel production especially with high phospholipids-containing oils as feedstock.