PRODUCTION OF BIODIESEL FROM PALM OLEIN USING BIO-BASED HETEROGENOUS CATALYST PREPARED FROM COW BONE: OPTIMIZATION OF TRANSESTERIFICATION PROCESS VARIABLES USING RESPONSE SURFACE METHODOLOGY

ABSTRACT

In this work, the potential of bio-based heterogeneous catalyst prepared from cow bone was investigated for the production of biodiesel from palm olein. The effects of transesterification process variables on biodiesel production from palm olein using the biobased catalysts were also investigated. The catalyst was characterized in terms of functional group, elemental composition and crystalline structure using standard procedures. The transesterification reaction was designed employing the central composite design of response surface methodology for three variables at five levels. The transesterification process variables considered and their range of values include temperature of 30 – 90℃, catalyst loading of 1 – 10 wt% and time of 30 – 180 mins. Analysis of the catalyst showed a highly crystalline material with little impurities. Elemental composition of the catalyst showed the catalyst is composed mainly of calcium oxide (95.184%) with little concentrations magnesium oxide (1.300%) and aluminium oxide (1.691%). Temperature and catalyst loading were found to have significant effects on the biodiesel yield while time was found insignificant. The maximum biodiesel yield of 97.16% was obtained at a temperature of 57.01℃, catalyst dosage of 2.82 wt% and time of 97.97 mins, with a desirability of 0.948. The very high yield of biodiesel showed that the catalyst was effective for the transesterification process and also that palm olein has a viable potential to be used as base stock for biodiesel production. The high and very close R2 values of the experimental and predicted yields of biodiesel showed reasonable agreement between the predicted and experimental values and showed that the transesterification process was efficiently modeled using response surface methodology