Biodiesel production from palm oil

Abstract

Methyl ester was produced from many sources of oil palm products, namely used frying oil, RBD palm oil, degummed and deacidified palm oil, palm stearin and superhard palm stearin. Production process was a conventional transesterification batch process using methanol as reactant and sodium hydroxide as catalyst. Production procedure consisted of oil preparation, solvent preparation, reaction step, glycerol separation, washing step and finishing step. Thin layer chromatograph was used to determine the composition of product and nearly 100% methyl ester was obtained at a suitable condition. Molar ratio of oil: methanol was about 1:6, which equal to 20% by weight of methanol. Sodium hydroxide was 0.5-1 %wt. of oil. The production temperature was 60-80ºC, mixing time was only 15-30 minutes and reaction time was 3-4 hours. Many fuel properties of methyl ester were very close to high-speed diesel such as viscosity, density, heating value and boiling point range. Pour point of methyl ester was higher than diesel owing to the high composition of saturated methyl ester that has a high melting point.

Keywords

• biodiesel
• methyl ester
• refined palm oil
• palm stearin
• transesterification