Intensification of interesterification of sustainable feedstock as mahua oil for biodiesel production

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the current work, the ultrasonic horn induced cavitation was used as an intensification approach for the production of fatty acid methyl esters (FAME), i.e. biodiesel and triacetin as a by-product from the reaction of mahua oil selected as sustainable feedstock and methyl acetate (MA). The effects of process variables like reaction temperature, mahua oil to methyl acetate molar ratio, reaction time, catalyst loading, duty cycle, and power on yield of FAME have been studied and the results elucidated best conditions for maximum fatty acid methyl ester yield of 96% as time of 50 min, temperature of 50C, molar ratio of 1:8, duty cycle of 40%, ultrasonic power of 70 W and catalyst loading of 1 wt%. For conventional approach based on only stirring, the yield was 61% under otherwise similar conditions. Kinetic study was performed to estimate the order of reaction and the activation energy. It was shown that the kinetics was well fitted to first-order reaction and activation energy was observed as 25.9 kJ/mol. The study revealed the effective application of ultrasonic horn in intensification of biodiesel production using interesterification reaction resulting in considerably higher yield of FAME.