Preparation of Epoxidized Fatty Acid Ethyl Ester from Tung Oil as a Bio-lubricant Base-Stock

Preparation of epoxidized tung oil ethyl ester (ETOEE) was explored in this work via a two-step approach to produce bio-lubricant with enhanced thermal-oxidative stability. Transesterification of tung oil with ethanol was first carried out with KOH as the catalyst at 60 °C and a molar ratio of tung oil to ethanol of 1:20 for 2 h. The obtained tung oil ethyl ester (TOEE) was subjected to epoxidation in the presence of hydrogen peroxide and formic...