Journal of Mines, Metals and Fuels

Manjunath. R ¹, Archna Narula ², Siva Kiran RR ²

Affiliations
1 Department of Biotechnology, Sir M Visvesvaraya Institute of Technology, Bangalore-562157, IN
2 Department of Chemical Engineering, MSRIT, Bangalore-560054, IN

Abstract

Palm Oil Sludge (POS) was used to make biodiesel with HCl as an acidic catalyst along with methanol, followed by a transesterification reaction. The high Free Fatty Acid (FFA) content was reduced from 18.96% to 1.4% in the POS using 5% wt. of HCl, 7.5:1 molar ratio of Methanol to Palm Oil Sludge (POS) waste, 60 min stirrer and 400 rpm. The effect of reaction duration was also studied and found that 97.53% of FFA removal was achieved at 90 min of esterification process. The transesterification reaction yielded 94.66% biodiesel at catalyst loading 0.25%wt of NaOH for a reaction duration of 60min, at 60°C and 400 RPM. The properties of biodiesel produced was analyzed as per IS 1448 standards and was found comparable to ASTM D6751 petroleum diesel standards and ASTM D6751 biodiesel standards. This study also involves the optimization of process parameters for the removal of excess FFA using Response Surface Methodology (RSM) and Box- Behnken Design (BBD).

Keywords

Palm oil Sludge (POS), Box-Behnken Design (BBD), Response Surface Methodology (RSM).

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