Hi David, [EMAIL PROTECTED] is running a research project on transesterification of beef tallow. I'm not sure he has heaps of results from his enzymatic process yet but he certainly has references to all the literature you need. (Mohammed is an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Auckland in New Zealand)
We are making commercial quantities (1 tonne/day)of biodiesel by transesterifying stearin from palm oil. Indeed, one of the Thai railways routes from Hadyai to Sungei Golok is using a B50 blend of our stuff with petro diesel in their 150km run every day. At the moment I have built a 120 litre deep bed unit for working on a crude palm oil feedstock with the methoxide introduced at the bottom. We have lots of stearin and palmitin (lard!) floating in the olein liquid (and large amounts of free fatty acids) so we have to run the reactor at 60C. This temperature is close enough to the boiling point of methanol that we have to recover the excess methanol to make the process economic. I imagine you would have to do the same with lard. Lots of luck Michael Allen Visiting Professor Prince of Songkla University Thailand --- David Teal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > In Scotland, chip shops use lard (animal fat). Last > week I took a quantity > of such material and tried (admittedly without much > confidence) using the > same procedure as for WVO (2 stage base). Nothing > doing, as expected. I > was hoping Aleks' acid/base method would be the > answer, but from Todd's > reply we might need HTP. Any experience with lard > anyone? > > David T. > > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs http://www.hotjobs.com ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> 4 DVDs Free +s&p Join Now http://us.click.yahoo.com/pt6YBB/NXiEAA/mG3HAA/9bTolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Biofuels at Journey to Forever http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuel at WebConX http://www.webconx.dns2go.com/2000/biofuel/biofuel.htm List messages are archived at the Info-Archive at NNYTech: http://archive.nnytech.net/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/