Production of biodiesel from phoenix sylvestris oil: Process optimisation technique

Abstract

This research aims to extract biodiesel from Phoenix sylvestris seed oil (PSSO). The free fatty acids of biodiesel are evaluated and found to be 9.37 mg KOH/g. The high FFA value suggested implementing a two-step transesterification process. An optimisation technique was employed to achieve high yield with enhanced quality and minimum wastage. The Taguchi method optimised experimental entities such as methanol to oil proportion, agitation speed, catalyst quantity, and reaction temperature. The investigations revealed that agitation speed of 450 rpm with reaction temperature of 55 °C, the molar proportion of 4.5:1 and 1.5 wt% of NaOH produced 93.2% efficient conversion. The methanol to oil proportion is measured as the significant entity with 54.95% contribution in the reaction process using ANOVA. The biofuel obtained from Phoenix sylvestris seed oil matches with necessary international standards.