Biodiesel from Lindera glauca oil, a potential non-food feedstock in Southern China

In this study, fruit oil of Lindera glauca was investigated for the first time as a promising non-conventional feedstock to produce biodiesel, which was performed using a two-step catalyzed process on a laboratory scale. L. glauca fruit has high oil content (43.35 ± 3.24%), and its oil has low acid value (2.18 mg KOH g−1). The fatty acid composition of LG oil mainly includes oleic acid (36.34% ± 1.1%), linoleic acid (10.53% ± 0.4%), palmitic acid (17. 30% ± 0.7%) and decanoic acid (15. 80% ± 0.5%). Four important factors for reaction conditions were repeatedly tested to obtained the optimum conditions, i.e., molar ratio of 10:1 (methanol/oil), sodium hydroxide (NaOH) concentration (1.50% w/w), reaction temperature (60 °C), and the reaction times (60 min), with a mean of 95.6% of biodiesel production. The main properties of LG biodiesel were conformed to EN 14214-08, ASTM D6751-10 and GB/T 20828-2014 standards, especially the oxidative stability (16.8 h) and Flash point (158 °C) were excellent. These results obtained in this work can provide important information for developing this non-food feedstock.