Valuable feedstock from waste materials

Nowadays recycling and reprocessing waste materials is becoming a primary issue. As described in previous works [1, 2], a method for producing BioDiesel (BD) from triglycerides using chlorotrimethylsilane (TMSCl) as “mediator” has been reported. In this process, transesterification and esterification are performed at the same time. The acidic condition allows to use substrates coming from the recovery of food waste materials such as fried oil or animal fats from slaughter, that have a very high content in free fatty acids (FFA), avoiding the production of soaps and emulsions, that determine serious problems in the currently applied alkaline-catalyzed process. Moreover, in the reported procedure, at the end of the reaction the mixture divides in two phases that can be easily separated. The upper one contains FAME (fatty acid methyl esters), ready for the distillation. The lower phase is a mixture of glycerol and α-monochlorohydrin. Now, with the aim to optimize the selective conversion into α-monochlorohydrin or α,γ-dichlorohydrin, the reaction of glycerol with TMSCl has been studied. In particular, α,γ-dichlorohydrin, precursor of epichlorohydrin, is obtained in an easier way with respect to the known processes [3, 4], based on the use of gaseous HCl. Since the two processes use the same reagent (TMSCl), they could be integrate for the complete conversion of triglycerides into valuable commodities. [1] A. Brandi, A. Salvini, G. Cipriani, D. Giomi and G.Bartolozzi, Patent WO 2011/023712 A1. [2] A. Salvini, D. Giomi, G. Cipriani, G. Bartolozzi, R. Alfini, A. Brandi, RSC Adv., 2012, 2, 4864-4868 [3]. D. J. Schereck, W. J. J. Kruper, R. Varjian, M. E. Jones, R. M. Campbell, K. Kearns, B. Hook. Patent WO2006/020234 A1 [4] R. Tesser, E. Santacesaria, M. Di Serio, G. Di Nuzzi, V. Fiandra, Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 2007, 46, 6456−6465.