High-Shear Mixing-Assisted Esterification of Lauric Acid to Produce Value-Added Products and Intermediaries: Effect of the Alcohol Structure.

ABSTRACT: This paper describes the benefits of incorporating the high-shear mixing (HSM) technology to intensify the homogeneous acid-catalyzed esterification of lauric acid (LA) with a set of alcohols having different chain lengths and branching degrees to produce lauric acid alkyl esters, as a sustainable alternative for producing diverse products (cosmetics, diesel fuel, cetane improvers, and chemical intermediaries). To elucidate the effect of the alcohol structure, the esterification reaction is conducted in the liquid phase at 60 °C, with an alcohol-to-LA molar ratio of 13:1 and 500 rpm for 12 min, using sulfuric acid as the catalyst. The HSM-assisted esterification requires only 12 min to suffice to convert from 88.2 to 93.6% fed LA and from 16.3 to 90.7% fed LA when reacting with linear and

SUBMITTER: Reyes-Cruz FM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12508932 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature