Technical description of new enzymatic biodiesel pretreatment technology – Eversa® Advance

Traditional biodiesel, namely fatty acid methyl esters (FAME), has been a sustainable alternative to fossil diesel for many years.

The most common production process is through transesterification of oils and fats with methanol catalyzed by highly alkaline sodium methylate.

But usage of this catalyst results in yield loss through soap formation and elevated catalyst costs through unwanted catalyst consumption, unless the feedstock oil is dry and contains no free fatty acids (FFA). Drying is simple and easy, but most relevant oils and fats comprise elevated FFA concentrations, and removal of FFA is often expensive and difficult. This is either due to high operating costs, yield losses, or capital costs, depending on the choice of FFA-reducing pretreatment process.

With the recent launch of the Eversa® Advance technology, Novonesis aims to alleviate these challenges.

The process can reduce feedstock FFA concentrations of up to 20 wt% to levels compatible with the methylate-catalyzed chemical transesterification reaction, thus enabling traditional biodiesel plants to efficiently process a wide range of feedstocks, from crude vegetable oils to used cooking oil (UCO) and animal fats.

The process operates at 40-50 °C with an enzymatic catalyst resulting in no side reactions and no related yield loss or coloring at safe operating conditions. Additionally, the process utilizes unconverted methanol from the chemical transesterification step, thereby removing or reducing the need for additional methanol.

It is a scalable solution with reaction times of 2-12 hours, adjustable by enzyme dosage. Eversa® Advance is easy to implement as an add-on to any existing plant, providing increased feedstock flexibility, and is especially suitable as a simple retrofit of acid-esterification pretreatment processes.

This presentation will be an in-depth technical description of Eversa® Advance on the mode of action of the enzyme, process implementation and operation, and the associated economics.