Chemical modification of canola oil for the production of useful commercial chemicals: A value addition to canola industry

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Canada is world's largest canola oil exporting country. The total production of canola oil in western Canada was 7.6 million tones in 2004-2005, which was well above the ten year average of 6.5 million tones. According to the statistics Canada estimates, Saskatchewan accounts for approximately 38 % of Western Canadian canola production. The Canola Council of Canada has earmarked 100,000 tones of canola oil for industrial applications due to the surplus quantity of canola oil produced. Except for biodiesel, there is as such no major industrial application of canola so far. Also, the major barrier in commercialization of the biodiesel produced from canola oil is its high processing and raw material cost. Chemical modification namely epoxidation, ring-opening and esterification of canola oil produce chemicals of commercial importance that car be used in various domains as plasticizers and stabilizers in halogen-containing polymers, as lubricant, as components in plastics and in urethane foams and, in general, as intermediates for a large number of commodities. The current research proposal focuses on the development of a green and environmentally friendly process based on heterogeneous mesoporous titanium (Ti) containing zeolite catalysts such as MCM-41 and SB A-15 catalysts for the epoxidation of canola oil and preparation of biodegradable lubricant base stock from epoxidized canola oil. Also, in the present work these heterogeneous catalysts can be used for all the related reactions, i.e. epoxidation, ring opening and esterification. The proposed catalysts and process development work will focus on a new process technology for the production of eco-friendly consumer based canola products from canola oil. This will surely benefit the canola oil industry as the proposed process would be a very good outlet for canola. If successful, the proposed process will be applied to other vegetable oils such as soya, rapeseed etc.