Abstract:
Diminishing petroleum reserves, increasing demand, soaring crude oil price and environment
degradation; have increased the interest in alternative fuels which are renewable, sustainable,
biodegradable, non-toxic and environment friendly, such as Biodiesel. Biodiesel production by
transesterification of non edible oils is getting tremendous attentions from researchers
worldwide. It is mainly synthesized by homogeneous transesterification of vegetable oils. But
many problems associated with homogeneous transesterification; increases production cost of
biodiesel due various separation steps, waste water generation and saponification. Therefore,
focus is being shifted to heterogeneous transesterification.
To get insight into synthesis of biodiesel, results of a recently published paper on homogeneous
transesterification of soybean oil have been reproduced. Jatropha and Karanja oil; both being non
edible; are potential feedstocks from Indian prospective. Karanja is an underutilized tree. Karanja
oil has been selected for biodiesel synthesis. A solid base catalyst was prepared by solid solid
mixing of K2CO3 on MgO and characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Field emission
scanning electron microscope (FESEM). Loading ratio was kept 0.6 m/m of K2CO3/MgO.
Experiments were conducted to understand effect of reaction time, temperature and reactant
molar ratio. Effect of different supports for K2CO3 was also investigated. Optimization of
reaction parameters (reaction time, temperature, molar ratio and catalyst amount) have been
done. Biodiesel yield of 91.5% was obtained at the optimum reaction conditions of temperature
at 70o C, reaction time of 2 h, oil to methanol molar ratio 1:9 using 2 wt% catalyst amount. The
fuel properties of biodiesel prepared from Karanja oil were determined using ASTM standards to
check compliance with B100 standards.
