Bioester production from shea oil using ethanol and alkaline catalyst: Bioester with medicinal property offers opportunity to be used in pharmaceutical and personal care product industries

Shea butter is a vegetable oil. Shea butter is a tiny yellowish or ivory-colored fat extracted from the nut of the African shea tree. It is widely used in cosmetics as a moisturizer, salve or lotion. It is edible and is used in food preparation in Africa. One problem associated with the use of neat shea butter is its relatively high viscosity (80 mm2/s at 50oC). Possible process for the reduction of viscosity is splitting off of glycerol backbone thorough transesterification. Due to toxicity, methanol is not suggested to use in transesterification of shea butter. In this study, transesterification of shea butter, a highly viscous vegetable oil was carried out to reduce its viscosity, allowing its convective transport at room temperature. The study was aided by describing the kinetic behavior of the transesterification process of the shea butter, in order to facilitate the handling of bioester produced, according to its characteristics of low viscosity to be used in cosmetics application. This laboratory scale study was antecedent to possible industrialization of the bioester production technology.