Biodiesel Production From Jatropha Curcas L. Oil Using Supercritical Methyl Acetate And Methanol Process
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Date
2011-05
Authors
Muhammad Niza, Noorzalila
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
Biodiesel synthesized from non-edible oil of Jatropha curcas L. (Jatropha) oil offers several advantages compared with edible oil such as it does not compete with food resources. However, Jatropha oil consists of high free fatty acids content, hence, the production of biodiesel through conventional alkaline catalyst may lead to problems with saponification. Furthermore, the application of methanol in transesterification process may result to oversupply of glycerol production as by-product. Therefore, in this study non-catalytic supercritical method using methyl acetate as the solvent was employed in transesterification of Jatropha oil to produce biodiesel. Nevertheless supercritical methanol (SCM) method was also been investigated for comparison purposes. The effects of reaction time, reaction temperature and molar ratio of solvent to oil were studied and optimized using Design of Experiment. The reaction pressure was consistently operated at critical pressure of methyl acetate and methanol which were 40 and 80 bar, respectively. The results revealed that for supercritical methyl acetate (SCMA) process the optimum conditions to produce biodiesel, were at reaction time of 32 minutes, reaction temperature of 399 °C and molar ratio of methyl acetate to oil at 50. The actual optimum yield of BDF was 71.8 wt%. Meanwhile, for SCM process, the actual optimum yield of FAME obtained was higher which was 89.4 wt% and can be achieved at the following optimum conditions: reaction time of 27 minutes, reaction temperature of 358 °C and molar ratio of methanol to oil at 44. It was found that
methyl acetate has high solubility in triglyceride, leading to lower reactivity in the SCMA reaction, thus the yield of biodiesel obtained was lower than the one obtained in SCM process. Nevertheless, the SCMA reaction has shown that triacetin can be produced from the reaction instead of glycerol.
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Keywords
Biodiesel production from jatropha curcas L. oil , using supercritical methyl acetate and methanol process