Biodiesel Fuel Production by Enzymatic Transesterification of Oils: Recent Trends, Challenges and Future Perspectives

Liquid fuels have been used for many years as the most dominant and basic fuel for motor engines. However, declining fossil fuel resources as well as the tendency for developing new renewable biofuels have shifted the interest of the society towards finding novel alternative fuel sources. Biodiesel (monoalkyl esters of long-chain fatty acids) has a great potential as an alternative diesel fuel. From an environmental point of view it shows clear advantages over conventional fuel: it comes from renewable sources, and hence does not contribute to new carbon dioxide emission, it is biodegradable, its combustion products have reduced levels of particulates, sulphur oxides, carbon oxides, nitrogen oxides, and therefore, significantly reduces pollution (Al-Zuhair, 2007; Salis et al., 2005). One of the advantages of biodiesel in comparison to other biofuels is that biodiesel can be pumped, stored and handled using the same infrastructure employed for conventional diesel fuel (Robles-Medina et al., 2009). Also, major advantage of biodiesel as an alternative fuel is that its energy content is similar to conventional fuels, so it can be used either on its own or mixed with conventional diesel fuel, with no need of altering existing engines (Bozbas, 2005). European countries have recognized need for alternative fuels and issued the Directive on the Promotion of the use of biofuels and other renewable fuels for transport (2003/30/EC). The Directive stipulates that EU countries should replace 5.75% of fossil fuels with alternative, biofuels until 31. December 2010. This Directive has been amended by Directive 2009/28/EC which also promotes the usage of energy from renewable sources (aims at achieving a 20% share of energy from renewable sources in the EU’s final consumption of energy by 2020). In 2005, the estimated world production of biodiesel was 2.92 million tones of which 87% was obtained in EU. More importantly, between 2000 and 2005 world production increased threefold, indicating that share of biodiesel in global fuel production will significantly increase in future (Mousdale, 2008). There are several possible processes for biodiesel synthesis: pyrolysis, the use of microemulsions and transesterification. Though pyrolysis, due to reduced viscosity, gives good quality fuel it still produces more biogasoline than biodiesel fuel. Fuel produced by microemulsion creates engine performance problems (Fukuda et al., 2001; Ma and Hanna, 1999). Conventionally, biodiesel is produced by transesterification of triacylglycerol (TAG) and short chain alcohols, commonly methanol, in the presence of an acid or an alkaline