Hydrolysis of triacylglycerol(TAG) from fats and oils to glycerol and free fatty acid (FFA), also referred to as fat splitting, is an important reaction for the olechemical industry. Typically, hydrolysis is carried out at 100-260℃ and 100-7000 kPa using 0.4-0.15(w/w) initial water to oil ratio with or without catalysts. It is an endothermic reaction occurs in a stepwise manner where TAG is initially hydrolyzed to diacyglycerol (DAG) then to monoacylglycerol(MAG) and finally to glycerol. Water, in its subcritical state, can be used as both a solvent and reactant for the hydrolysis of triglycerides. subcritical water (150℃<T<370℃,0.4<p<22Mpa) can act as an acid or base catalyst. To investigate milder reaction conditions, in this study, waste cooking oil and fresh soybean oils will be hydrolyzed to free fatty acids with deionized water under SC CO2 medium in a batch reactor. Effects of the reaction temperature, time and solvent to feed ratio on FFA in the hydroysis at equilibrium will also observed for optimum conversion of oil. The reaction products will be analyzed by acid-base titration, GC FID and HPLC.

Recently biodiesel has drawn much attraction as renewable enegy due to its environmental benefits and the fact that it is made from renewable resources. However, the production cost of biodiesel is one of the main hurdle to commercialize it. One of the way to reduce the biodiesel production cost is to use the waste cooking oil as feedstock. In the conventional transesterification process of waste cooking oils for biodiesel production, the presence of free fatty acids and water causes severe problems such as formation of soap and decreasing of catalyst yield. Much effort has been devoted to solve the above problems and one of the promising way is the supercritical methanol treatment which is performed at the methanol supercritical environment (>239.45℃, >8.10 Mpa)one of the serious problems of the application of SCM process for the biodiesel production is the tough operation condition(high pressure, high temperature. In this study, we have studied about the supercritical methanol treatment for the biodiesel production with the soybean waste cooking oil as a feedstock in the present of various heterogeneous solid catalysts such as mesoporous silica and acid-doped mesorpous silica. Biodiesel conversion was increased at more mild opreation condition to the previous studies by using the catalysts. The conversion was more enhanced by modifying the catalysts.