Oil palm ash as solid catalyst for palm oil-based transesterification to biodiesel
| dc.contributor.author | Chin, Lip Han | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2014-10-21T03:21:10Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2014-10-21T03:21:10Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2009 | |
| dc.description | Master | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | Biodiesel is an alternative fuel for diesel engines that is gaining attention in terms of the depleting fossil fuel resources of the world and the mitigating of greenhouse effects due to carbon dioxide. In a conventional process for biodiesel production, triglycerides in oils are converted to biodiesel by using homogeneous catalyst. However, replacement of the homogeneous catalysis with a heterogeneous route has received much attention since the process can be simplified by facilitating the catalyst separation and purification steps. Hence, introduction of a solid heterogeneous catalyst in biodiesel production could reduce its price, also becoming competitive with diesel from a financial point of view. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the feasibility of oil palm ash (OPA), a waste material from oil palm mills which contains high weight percent of potassium, as solid catalyst for palm oil-based transesterification to biodiesel. Transesterification of cooking palm oil (CPO), waste palm oil (WPO) and palm kernel oil (PKO) to biodiesel was studied in a batch process and the reaction was carried out at 10 bars. OPA catalyst was characterized by scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray, surface area and fourier transform infrared spectrometry. Response surface methodology was used to study the effect of reaction time, methanol to oil molar ratio, reaction temperature and amount of catalyst on the transesterification and the effects of five-level-four factors as well as their reciprocal interactions were assessed. The effect of reaction time was found to be not significant for the transesterification of CPO and WPO, but significant for the transesterification of PKO. The optimum conditions obtained for transesterification were 0.5-1.19 h, 6.26-18, 60-175oC, 1.67-8.22 wt%, respectively for reaction time, methanol to oil molar ratio, temperature and amount of catalyst for transesterification of CPO, WPO and PKO. The optimum biodiesel yields of 89.90±10%, 60.07±10%, 67.53±10% were found for CPO, WPO, PKO, respectively. Moreover, the OPA solid catalyst proves to be effective in producing the appropriate quality of biodiesel as per the ASTM specification. The results indicate that OPA can be used in biodiesel production as a low cost solid base catalyst. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/125 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
| dc.subject | Chemical Engineering | en_US |
| dc.subject | Oil palm ash | en_US |
| dc.subject | Biodiesel | en_US |
| dc.title | Oil palm ash as solid catalyst for palm oil-based transesterification to biodiesel | en_US |
| dc.title.alternative | optimization by response surface methodology | en_US |
| dc.type | Thesis | en_US |
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