Exploring a promising feedstock for biodiesel production in Mediterranean countries: A study on free fatty acid esterification of olive pomace oil

Olive pomace oil is a non edible by-product stream from olive oil production process with low acquisition cost, appropriate for supporting biodiesel production in the Mediterranean countries. The main goal of this paper is to present experimental procedures carried out to optimize experimentally the pretreatment process for this feedstock in order to convert free fatty acids (FFA) to their respective methyl esters. Thus, an acid esterification process with sulfuric acid as catalyst was employed and evaluated for different acid-to-oil and methanol-to-oil ratios over the process time. The initial results are showing that olive kernel oil can be efficiently processed in order to decrease the free fatty acid concentration and improve the biodiesel potential of this feedstock.

► We carried out experiments to optimize the pretreatment process to convert FFAs to methyl esters.
► The olive kernel oil can be efficiently processed to decrease the FFAs’ concentration.
► The olive pomace oil could be sustainably used as a complementary feedstock to biodiesel.