KINETICS OF TRANSESTERIFICATION OF JATROPHA OIL FOR BIODIESEL PRODUCTION

Abstract

Biodiesel derived from renewable plant sources is monoalkyl esters of long chain fatty acids which fall in the carbon range C12-C22 and has similar properties as mineral diesel. There are various processes to convert vegetable oils (mainly triglycerides) into biodiesel. Transesterification is one of the most promising and successful of these processes. The equilibrium conversion of triglycerides (TG) is affected by various factors, namely, type of alcohol used, molar ratio of alcohol to triglyceride, type of catalyst, amount of catalyst, reaction temperature, reaction time and feedstock quality (like free fatty acid content, water content etc.). The present work reports the production of biodiesel from non-edible feedstock oils of Indian origin, separation, and characterization of biodiesel. This study also reports the optimal operating parameters for Jatropha oils in batch reactor. The main thrust of the present work was to study the kinetics, modeling and simulation of alkali-catalyzed transesterification of Jatropha curcas oils. This involved experimental work carried out in a 1.5 four-necked batch reactor to generate kinetic data, fitting reversible kinetic model, and simulating the batch reactor. The effects of temperature, catalyst concentrations, and molar ratios of methanol to triglycerides and stirring rates were investigated. A reversible kinetic model was developed and model parameters were obtained from the literature, Arrhenius equation was used for the temperature dependency of rate constant and model was simulated using Simulink. This model could be used for the study of changing reaction condition and to optimize the reaction condition. In the present study two-step process i.e. acid catalyzed esterification followed by base catalyzed treanesterification for the production of biodiesel as well as kinetic study.