Abstract
This study aimed at optimising and modelling the kinetics of biodiesel production from sunflower oil produced in EasyMax 102 Mettler Toledo reactor, in-situ real-time monitored using FTIR and catalysed by Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH). EasyMax 102 Mettler Toledo reactor is equipped with an FTIR DiCom (Diamond) probe, the experiments were designed and monitored using iControl software. The results were recorded and quantified using iC IR software. The optimisation of the biodiesel was performed using three key parameters (methanol to oil ratio, catalyst ratio and temperature) while keeping time at 60 minutes and mixing rate at 150RPM. The highest yield of 97.85% was obtained at 60 o C, 0.85 wt % catalyst ratio and 10.5 methanol to oil mole ratio. The analysis of variances (ANOVA) of biodiesel production showed the values of 0.9847, 0.9674 and 0.8749, for R-squared, adjusted R-squared and predicted R-squared, respectively. A quadratic mathematical model was developed to predict the biodiesel conversion in the specified parameters ranges. The activation energy (Ea) and frequency factor were found to be 41.279 kJ.mole -1 , 1.08 x10 -4 M -1 . s -1 , respectively. The proposed kinetic model was a pseudo-first-order reaction.
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