Optimization of Esterification Palm Fatty Acid Distillate to Methyl Ester Using Microwave-Assisted Titanium Sulfonated Glucose Acid Catalyst

Abstract

An alternative feedstock, palm fatty acid distillate (PFAD) provides huge potential in solving the problem of high cost biodiesel production. The PFAD was esterified in batch mode using microwave-assisted titanium sulfonated incomplete carbonized glucose (Ti-SO3H/ICG) catalyst. Microwave-assisted method was proposed to shorten the time and energy consumed during catalyst preparation. The process parameters which include molar ratio of methanol to PFAD, reaction temperature, catalyst loading and reaction time were optimized via response surface methodology (RSM) using central composite design (CCD). The optimization showed 99.63 % yield and 94.61 % conversion of PFAD to FAME under the following optimal conditions: molar ratio methanol to PFAD 11.30:1, reaction temperature 78.75 °C, 2.00 wt% catalyst loading and 1.8 h of reaction time. From this study, it can be shown that the costs for production can be reduced to its minimum level and the time consumed in catalyst preparation can be shorten.