OPTIMIZATION OF BIODIESEL PRODUCTION FROM MANGO KERNEL FAT USING CALCIUM OXIDE AS CATALYST
Authors: *Osagiede C.A, Egharevba I.P, Ihoeghian N.A, Aisien F.A
DOI Info: N/A
ABSTRACT
The increase in the demand for energy and awareness on environmental concern necessitate consideration for renewable energy. The potential of mango kernel fat as an alternative source of biodiesel was investigated and the production process has been optimized in this study. Solvent extraction was employed to extract the fat from the mango kernel using n-hexane as solvent in a soxhlet extractor. Calcium oxide was used as the heterogeneous catalyst. Response surface methodology was employed to study the effect of methanol-to-oil molar ratio, reaction time and catalyst concentration on the yield of biodiesel. A statistically significant quadratic polynomial regression model was found to best fit the data with no significant lack of fit. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) further validated the strong correlation between the experimental and predicted data with a coefficient of determination (R2) value of 0.985. Optimum biodiesel yield was found to be 87.37% at methanol-to-oil molar ratio of 8.9:1, catalyst concentration of 1% and reaction time of 89.3 minutes. In addition, the fuel properties of the produced biodiesel were in the acceptable ranges according to international standards for biodiesel specifications.
Affiliations: Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Benin, PMB 1154, Benin City, Nigeria
Keywords: Biodiesel, Transesterification, Optimization, Triglyceride, Heterogeneous Catalyst
Published date: 2017/12/29
