Fatty acid alkyl esters and monounsaturated alcohols production from jojoba oil using short-chain alcohols for biorefinery concepts

• Potential use of jojoba oil as a source of high value-added products and energy was studied.
• Alcoholysis of jojoba oil with four short-chain alcohols was carried out.
• Separation of jojobyl alcohols (JA) from fatty acid alkyl esters (FAAE) was performed.
• The separation of JA from FAAE has considerable influence on fuel proprieties of FAAE.
• Using other short-chain alcohols instead of methanol will influence in some proprieties of FAAE.

In this work, the jojoba oil (JO), was transesterified with four short-chain alcohols to give mixtures of jojobyl alcohols (JA) as main product and fatty acid alkyl esters (FAAE) as co-product in biorefinery concept. As the use of these mixtures as biodiesel have many disadvantages, the separation of JA from the FAAE was carried out. After the separation step, the main properties of transesterified jojoba oil (TJO), JA and FAAE were determined. The JA (9-octadecenol, 11-eicosenol, 13-docosenol and 15-tetracosenol), which are obtained through two-step crystallizations have many pharmaceutical applications and a high-added value as main product. From these results, it was found that after the separation of JA from FAAE some properties of the fraction rich in FAAE, has been improved regarding its corresponding TJO. In addition, when other short-chain alcohols instead of methanol were used as transesterification agents, the cold properties and oxidation stability of FAAE were improved, while the kinematic viscosity was increased.