Browsing by Author "Demissie, Biniyam"

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    Biodiesel Production Optimization and Quality Assessment Using Jatropha Curcas Oil And Ethanol Alcohol
    (Addis Ababa University, 2001) Demissie, Biniyam; Alemu, Demiss (PhD)
    Concern over high transportation fuel costs, trade deficits, depleting resources, energy security, and mounting evidence of global climate change has led to re-investigation of fossil fuel alternatives. For this reason Ethiopian Ministry of Water and Energy has started promoting bio-energy as a means to transform the nation’s abundant renewable biomass resources into cost competitive, high power biofuels and products. Biodiesel offers one renewable fuel option that can be produced from non edible vegetable oil sources. Fortunately Ethiopia has many opportunities for biodiesel production. The country´s favorable climatic condition for the cultivation of non edible vegetable oil bearing plants and the abundance of ethanol alcohol produced from the byproduct of local sugar factories gave the country a great advantage in producing biodiesel and get a little relief from petroleum related problems. However, the effort made to introduce the technology and take the most out of it is so low to force policy makers and encourage local and foreign businessmen towards the production of biodiesel using local resources. Therefore this research tries to fill this gap. The main purpose of this research is therefore to develop a biodiesel production technique from Jatropha oil (Jatropha curcas Linnaeus) and a locally produced ethanol alcohol. Special attention was paid to the optimization of base-catalyzed transesterification for converting fatty acid ethyl ester (FAEE). The crude Jatropha oil used in the transesterification contained 5.01 mg KOH/g of acid and after neutralization it was possible to bring down the acid value to 1.35 mg KOH/g. Inorder to determine the optimum condition for tranestefication of Jatopha oil using ethanol and caustic soda as input, 16 experiments varyings ethanol-to-oil molar ratio (6:-9:1) and reaction temperature (55, 65, 70, and 78 oC). Reaction time, mixing intensity, and catalyst concentration was fixed to 3 hrs, 600 rpm, and 1.5 % by weight of the oil respectively. The optimum conditions found for transesterification were an ethanol-to-oil molar ratio of 9:1 and a reaction temperature of 70 0C. At the optimum condition obtained a FAEE conversion of 80 % v/v was achieved. The resulting Jatropha biodiesel has, a density of 0.86 g/ml, viscosity of 4.13 mm2/s, acid value of 0.71 mg KOH/g, and flash point of 173 0C satisfing ASTM D6751-02 and EN 14214 biodiesel standards. The production proces developed in this work will be used in production of a small scale plant withh capcity of 300 liter per day.