The Influence of Molar Ratio of Methanol to PFAD and Esterification Reaction Time towards Biodiesel Characteristics Palm Fatty Acids Distillate Produced

Abstract

PFAD is potential enough to be developed as a biodiesel feedstock because it is cheap and always available. But the FFA in PFAD is so high, so esterification process is necessary to lower levels of the FFA. High levels of FFA PFAD and a solid form at room temperature need necessary studies to determine the needs of methanol as a reactant and reaction time esterification for high yield and characteristics of biodiesel. Esterification of PFAD were carried out to study the effect of : molar ratios of methanol to PFAD of 6 : 1 – 10 : 1 and reaction time of 60 – 120 min. The optimum condition for esterification process was molar ratio of methanol to PFAD at 10 : 1 with 2 wt% of H2SO4 at 60˚C and 60 min. The amount of FFA was reduced from 97,17 wt% to less then 10 wt %, at the end of esterification process. The characteristic of biodiesel produced were 9.36 mg KOH/gr acid value, 5.01% FFA, 244 mg KOH/g saponification, 47.94 mg I/gr iodine value, 890 kg/m3 density, and negative result for determination water and sediment content.