[Stability of whole cell biocatalyst for biodiesel production from renewable oils].

Lipase-mediated biodiesel production becomes increasingly important because of mild reaction conditions, pollution free during the process and easy product separation. Compared with traditional immobilized lipase, whole cell biocatalyst is promising for biodiesel production because it is easy to prepare and has higher enzyme activity recovery. Rhizopus oryzae IFO4697 can be used as the catalyst for biodiesel production. To further study the stability of the whole cell biocatalyst is extremely important for its further application on large scale. This paper focuses on the stability study of Rhizopus oryzae IFO4697 when used for the methanolysis of renewable oils for biodiesel production. The results showed that water content was important for achieving high catalytic activity and good stability of the biocatalyst. The optimum water content was found to be 5%-15%. Both particle size and desiccation methods showed no obvious effect on the stability of the biocatalyst. With GA cross-linking pretreatment, the stability of the biocatalyst could be improved significantly. When Rhizopus oryzae IFO4697 repeatedly used for next batch reaction, direct vacuum filtration was found to be a good way for the maintenance of good stability of the biocatalyst. Under the optimum reaction conditions, the methyl ester yield could keep over 80% during 20 repeated reaction batches.