Effects of temperature, alkaline catalysts and molar ratio of alcohol to oil on the efficiency of production biodiesel from castor oil

Abstract

In this research we studied the production of biodiesel from castor oil and the effect of temperature, molar ratio and catalyst type on biodiesel production efficiency. Transesterification of castor oil was used to production biodiesel. Transesterification reaction was studied at different molar ratio of methanol: oil from 6:1, 1:6.5, 1:7, 1:9, 1:12 to 15:1, at 65 °C, reaction time up to 120 minutes and fixed amount of catalyst (1 wt.% KOH). The Conversion efficiency was 97% when using the ratio of alcohol to oil 1: 7 ratio Molar. The potassium hydroxide better than sodium hydroxide in the esterificationreactions with using methanol. Because sodium hydroxide having difficulty soluble in methanol alcohol. As for the reaction temperature, the best temperature is 65 ° C , efficiently convert up to 97%. As for 60 ° C and 70 ° C conversion efficiency was 89.5% and 91.4%, respectively.

Keywords

• biodiesel
• castor oil
• temp
• molar ratio and catalyst