Concentration of renewable products of crude bio-oil from thermal cracking of the methyl esters in castor oil

Castor oil has been widely used as raw material to obtain compounds such as paints, solvents, rubbers, polyurethane polymers and chemical inputs. Then, one highlighted route is thermal cracking of castor oil to produce bio-oil, mainly composed of heptaldehyde and methyl undecenoate, which are used as precursors of lactones in the food and beverage industry. The main aim of this study was to evaluate the separation heptaldehyde and methyl undecenoate by distillation of bio-oil from thermal cracking of the methyl esters in castor oil (MECO). Distilled fractions were analyzed by gas chromatography (GC). Thus, it was possible to concentrate the fractions of heptaldehyde and methyl undecenoate in a section with a distillation system at atmospheric pressure with a distillation rate of 5.0 mL min-1 at 270 °C, which motivates new researches for up-scaling of the process.