Biodiesel Production Optimization and Quality Assessment Using Jatropha Curcas Oil And Ethanol Alcohol
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Date
2001
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
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.
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Energy Technology