Influence of fly ash as additive on the viscosity of transesterified neem oil

Abstract

Biodiesel as the renewable source of energy has become one of the alternative solutions towards the problems associated with the use of fossil fuels in energy generation. Most of the biodiesel produced via tansesterification process are associated with viscosity that is above diesel limit. This problem can be mitigated through the use of solid materials as additive. This paper investigates the influence of fly ash as additive on the viscosity of transesterified neem oil. The morphology and chemical constituent of fly ash were studied using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Xray Fluoroscopy (XRF). The crude neem oil was purified; transesterified and 0.1 wt%, 0.2 wt%, 0.3wt%, 0.4wt% and 0.5wt% of fly ash were used as additive. The viscosity of crude, purified, transesterified and transesterified with 0.1 wt%, 0.2 wt%, 0.3wt%, 0.5wt% and 0.5wt% of fly ash as additive were measured using brookfield digital viscometer. SEM shows that the mophorlogy of fly ash was dispersed particle with cloudy structure while XRF shows that the major compound presence on fly ash was silicon oxide. The viscosity of the samples decreases as the temperature increases and with the addition of fly ash. But on the addition of 0.3wt% it shows significant variation at equal range of temperature. This indicated that the fly ash can be used as biodiesel additive on neem oil as it decreases the level of viscosity presence on the oil.