Fatty Acid Methyl Ester (FAME) Production from Waste Cooking Oil

Abstract

Biodiesel is clear liquid with a light to dark yellow color. Biodiesel is one of the alternative fuels that are attractive because of its favorable characteristics such as being non-toxic, biodegradable, renewable, carbon neutral and low emission. Fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) is a type of biodiesel. In this study, it was produced by using transesterification of waste cooking oil (WCO) which was reacted with methanol and heterogeneous catalyst. The two heterogeneous catalysts that were used in this study were sodium (Na) metal hydroxide supported on oil palm frond (OPF) and Na metal supported on oil palm kernel shell (OPKS). The support metal used was sodium hydroxide solution (NaOH). OPF and OPKS were used as they are the major residues obtained from the oil palm plantation that covers approximately 14.72% of Malaysian’s total landmass. The parameters that in this study were the reaction temperatures of the transesterification process from 30°C to 60°C and the catalyst loading from 0.5wt% to 3wt%. The reaction time and ratio methanol to oil were kept constant which were 4 hours and 1:10 respectively. This experiment was conducted in order to investigate the effect of two different heterogeneous catalysts on both temperature and catalyst loading on the yield production of FAME. The results were obtained by using GCMS analysis. From the experiment that was conducted, the results of FAME production by using two different catalysts indicate that the higher the reaction temperature is, the higher the production of FAME which is at 60°C. It also shows that the percentage yield of FAME increases with the increase of catalyst loading until it reaches the best value which is at 1wt%.