Interesterification of rapeseed oil catalyzed by tin octoate

The interesterification of rapeseed oil was performed for the first time by using tin octoate as Lewis acid homogeneous catalysts and methyl or ethyl acetate as acyl acceptors in a batch reactor, within the temperature range 393-483 K. The yields in fatty acid ethyl esters (FAEE) and triacetin (TA) after 20 h of reaction time increased from 8% and 2%-to 61% and 22%, respectively, when the reaction temperature increased from 423 to 483 K. An optimum value of 40 for the acyl acceptor to oil molar ratio was found to be necessary to match good fatty acid alkyl ester yields with high enough reaction rate. The rate of generation of esters was significantly higher when methyl acetate was used as acyl acceptor instead of its ethyl homologue. The collected results suggest that tin octoate can be used as effective catalyst for the interesterification of rapeseed oil with methyl or ethyl acetate being highly soluble in the reaction system, less expensive than enzymes and allowing the operator to work under milder conditions than supercritical interesterification processes.