Resumo:
Biodiesel is a nontoxic renewable fuel and it’s composed of fatty acid methyl or
ethyl esters from triglycerides. It is already produced and used in European
countries and now it starts to be used in Brazil, therefore, the necessity to develop
national researches about the best route of production, more adequate raw
materials and energy viability. Thus, in the first part of this work, some basic
catalyzers for production of beef tallow ethyl ester (raw material at low cost) were
discussed, to show that it is possible to produce it through the alkali-catalyzed
transesterification, despite the difficulties in the separation of the products. In the
second part, the objective was to analyze the energy balance of the production of
beef tallow methyl ester. The energy balance can be defined as the ratio of non renewable energy used in the production of an energy unit of the fuel. To attain it,
operations and materials used in the cycle of production of biodiesel have been
identified, using some data collected from a biodiesel production facility previously
installed. Afterwards, the values of energy balance, which range from 4,1 to 9,49,
were obtained through the simulation of some scenes with different locations of
biodiesel facility and different yields of the transesterification reaction. Then, the
conclusion was that in all the scenes the energy balance was positive, confirming
the potential of use of the beef tallow, for production of biodiesel to be used as
additive to diesel or fuel.
