Pseudo catalytic transformation of volatile fatty acids into fatty acid methyl esters.

Instead of anaerobic digestion of biodegradable wastes for producing methane, this work introduced the transformation of acidogenesis products (VFAs) into fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs) to validate the feasible production of short-chained fatty alcohols via hydrogenation of FAMEs. In particular, among VFAs, this work mainly described the mechanistic explanations for transforming butyric acid into butyric acid methyl ester as a case study. Unlike the conventional esterification process (conversion efficiency of ∼94%), the newly introduced esterification under the presence of porous materials via the thermo-chemical process reached up to ∼99.5%. Furthermore, the newly introduced esterification via the thermo-chemical pathway in this work showed extremely high tolerance of impurities: the conversion efficiency under the presence of impurities reached up to ∼99±0.3%; thus, the inhibition behaviors attributed from the impurities used for the experimental work were negligible.