Abstract
Biodiesel is a non-toxic, renewable and environmental friendly fuel. This study involved the production of biodiesel from sludge palm oil (SPO), a low-cost waste oil via enzymatic catalysis. The enzyme catalyst was a Candida cylindracea lipase, locally-produced using palm oil mill effluent as the low cost based medium. The results in solvent system for biodiesel production showed that ethanol gave higher yield of biodiesel as compared to methanol. One-factor-at-a time (OFAT) method was applied to investigate several factors for enzymatic biodiesel production. The optimum levels of ethanol-to-SPO molar ratio, enzyme loading, reaction temperature, mixing speed and reaction time were 4:1, 10 U, 40°C, 250 rpm and 24 h, respectively with maximum yield of biodiesel of 62.3% (w/w SPO). The SPO had a promising potential for enzymatic biodiesel production using locally-produced lipase. Key words: Biodiesel, sludge palm oil, lipase, free fatty acid, fatty acid alkyl ester
Highlights
Increasing energy crisis and environmental concerns by fossil fuel and its depletion reserve have led to a very intense research on sustainable and renewable sources of energy such as biodiesel (Röttig et al, 2010; Ganesan et al, 2009)
Fatty acids composition determines the type of esters in biodiesel (Ruan et al, 2012)
It was found that the free fatty acids (FFA) content of sludge palm oil (SPO) was too high (51.64 ± 0.59%), it is unfavourable for the alkaline-catalyzed transesterification
Summary
Increasing energy crisis and environmental concerns by fossil fuel and its depletion reserve have led to a very intense research on sustainable and renewable sources of energy such as biodiesel (Röttig et al, 2010; Ganesan et al, 2009). Biodiesel produces less air pollutants, has lower sulphur content (0-24 ppm sulphur), lower aromatic content which reduces the smell of diesel exhaust and higher heat content which is about 88% of no. diesel fuel (Maceiras et al, 2011; Ghaly et al, 2010; Yee and Lee, 2008) It can be used neatly or by mixing it with diesel fuel in all conventional engines without modification (Moradi et al, 2013; Ganesan et al, 2009). The high cost of edible oils becomes a major impulse for the search of low-cost alternative feedstock for biodiesel production
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