Experimental Reaction Optimization for Biodiesel Production by Transesterification of Castor Oil

Biodiesel production is worthy of continued study and optimization of production procedures due to its environmentally beneficial attributes and its renewable nature. Heterogeneous transesterification is considered to be a green process. The process requires neither catalyst recovery nor aqueous treatment steps and very high yields of methyl esters can be obtained, close to the theoretical value. Metal oxides have been studied for the transesterification process of oils. The catalyst loading is varies for 1%, 2% and 3 %. Catalyst activity is a function of its specific surface area, base strength and base site concentration (A. A. Refaat, 2010). High specific surface area, strong base strength and high concentration of base sites are characteristics of an active transesterification catalyst. The reaction condition, reaction time, ratio of oil to alcohol and catalyst loading will affect the yield of fatty acid methyl ester (Hirata el al, 2007). The process of transesterification is affected by the mode of reaction condition, molar ratio of alcohol to oil, type of alcohol, type and amount of catalysts, reaction time and temperature and purity of reactants. The samples from the experiment is analyze using Gas Chromatography (GC) to observe the optimize parameter. The fatty acid methyl ester yield reached 99.93% for 3% catalysts loading, 99.91% for 2% catalyst loading and 99.77% for 3% catalyst loading. The higher percentage of catalyst loading, the greater methyl ester yield.