Abstract
The employment of sugar acid catalysts for biodiesel synthesis from non-edible palm fatty acid distillate (PFAD) has received huge research interest in recent times by reason of their stability and high catalytic performance. Notwithstanding, the need to extend research on the kinetic characteristics of these heterogeneous catalysts is important in order to understand their reaction mechanisms. The present investigation deals with the kinetics for the esterification of PFAD by means of modified sulfonated carbonized glucose catalyst to biodiesel in a three necked conventional reflux batch reactor. The efficient catalyst was synthesized by sulfonation of incomplete carbonized glucose. The pseudo-homogeneous first and second order (equimolar) mechanism was utilized to interpret the data at optimum operating conditions of 10:1 molar fraction of methanol to PFAD, 4 h time of reaction and 4 wt.% quantity of catalyst at varying reaction temperature of 50-65°C. Furthermore, some important properties of the PFAD biodiesel produced were assessed utilizing ASTM methods. The experimental data best fitted the bimolecular model (equimolar) second order model. The activation energy was calculated to be 55.08 kJmol-1 which indicates that the catalyst was very active in the esterification of the PFAD to biodiesel. Most of the measured fuel properties of the PFAD biodiesel were comparable with the ASTM standards.
Highlights
Free fatty acids (FFA) esterification and triglycerides (TG) transesterification with short chain alcohol like methanol are the key chemical routes for the synthesis of biodiesel known as methyl esters [1,2,3]
The results indicate that reaction temperature positvely influences the rate of esterification of the palm fatty acid distillate (PFAD) to Fatty acid Methyl Ester (FAME)
The kinetics of the modified sulfonated glucose catalyzed esterification of PFAD to FAME was successfully studied in a conventional reflux batch reactor
Summary
Free fatty acids (FFA) esterification and triglycerides (TG) transesterification with short chain alcohol like methanol are the key chemical routes for the synthesis of biodiesel known as methyl esters [1,2,3]. Due to environmental benefits and origin of renewable resources, biodiesel has been increasingly studied as an effective alternative fuel resource. Biodiesel production utilizing edible oil as feedstock results in high price of the product compared to the conventional diesel. The cost of edible oil feedstock is known to account for about 60–75% production cost of the biodiesel fuel [7]. Utilizing low-cost feedstocks for biodiesel production is gaining economic attractiveness [8,9,10]. One of the low-cost feedstock that has gained attention is the palm fatty acid distillate (PFAD)
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