Enzymatic obtainment of fatty acids from residual soybean oil

• Grant number: 18/23627-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Effective date (Start): June 01, 2019
• Effective date (End): December 31, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Microbiology - Applied Microbiology
• Principal Investigator: Valéria Marta Gomes de Lima
• Grantee: André Ferreira Cunha
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL-ASSIS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Assis. Assis , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The soybean oil used in industrial and household kitchens becomes a waste of great environmental impact if not disposed correctly or recycled. Vegetable oils are degraded when used in food frying, originating products such as mono- and diacylglycerols, as well as free fatty acids. A strategy for the reuse of residual soybean oil could be an enzymatic hydrolysis of the acylglycerols resulting from the oil degradation, followed by the extraction and fractionation of the total free fatty acids. Therefore, the objective of this work is to propose and estabilish a new technology of enzymatic hydrolysis of residual soybean oil, in order to obtain fatty acids of industrial interest. For this purpose, a lipase produced by the bacterium Burkholderia lata LBBIO-BL02 will be used for the hydrolysis study. Also, studies of extraction and fractionation of fatty acids will be done, in order to obtain an optimized protocol for this process. The studies will be evaluated by qualitative and quantitative analysis, such as acid value, quantification of fatty acids and thin layer chromatography. The residual soybean oil, obtained from donations, will be characterized by several physico-chemical analysis before its utilization.