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ABSTRACT
Solid minerals have found wide applications in the industries including biofuels from vegetable oil. This study seeks to investigate the effectiveness of local clay derived catalyst in enhancing the production of biodiesel from nonedible oil blend. Jatropha oil, neem oil, palm kernel oil and waste cooking oil were quartet feedstock optimized using mixture design with simplex lattice method in the esterification. 20 experimental runs were generated comprising 4 independent variables and 1 dependent variable. Experiments were conducted in 250ml conical flask placed on a constant temperature magnetic stirrer in the esterification process. Transesterification reactions were carried out using calcined clay sample in a muffle furnace at 900℃ with variable catalyst loading from 2wt% to 10wt%. effects of temperature (30 – 60℃) and time (30 – 90mins) were studied with fixed methanol to oil mole ratio (9:1). Results obtained revealed that solid mineral constituents were dolomite (78%), albite (10%), quartz (8%) and muscovite (5%) which converted to the metal oxides by calcination at 900℃. Esterification of oil blends resulted in 79.16% reduction in FFA. FTIR analysis of catalyst revealed a medium stretch peak of O-H group. SEM micrograph showed uniform spherical particles. EDS analysis of catalyst revealed the presence of calcium and magnesium in weight concentration at 61.32% and 32.60% respectively. Other elements were in trace amounts. The yield of fatty-acid methyl ester obtained at an optimum point of 6wt% catalyst loading was 92.9%. this study also investigates the kinetic modelling of transesterification rates and analysis of reaction kinetics. It was observed that first order kinetics provided a better model for the reaction present in the biodiesel reactor. Through a series of experiments conducted under controlled conditions, we determined the reaction rate constants to be 0.0141min-1, 0.0143min 1 , 0.0186min-1 & 0.03283min-1 at varying temperature of 30℃, 40℃, 50℃ and 60℃ respectively. the activation energy (Ea) which is the minimum amount of energy required by the reacting molecules to initiate a reaction was estimated to be 379.68kJ/mole and the frequency factor ko was estimated to be 0.0552 L mol-1 s-1. The results provide valuable insights into the reaction mechanisms and rate constants involved in the production process.
