CONTEXT

The industrial production of biodiesel in Europe, USA and Japan is carried out by chemical processes based on transesterification catalysed by strong bases. Such processes show several problems such as the difficulty to recover the by-product glycerol, the necessity to eliminate the base catalyst from the reaction medium by washing with water, which produces large amounts of alkaline wastes. Over the last years,the enzymatic synthesis of biodiesel by transesterification from vegetable oils has been widely described. However the use of volatile organic solvents as reaction media in enzymatic processes shows also several disadvantages such as the necessity of recovery, as a consequence of the high price and environment impact. Ionic liquids have emerged as green solvents due to their capacity to constitute a clean alternative, non pollutant and reusable as compared to volatile organic solvents