Journal of the Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers 43 (2012) 504–510

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Journal of the Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers

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Biodiesel production via alkali-catalyzed transesterification of Malaysian RBD

palm oil – Characterization, kinetics model
Mohammad Reza Shahbazi a, Behnam Khoshandam a,*, Masoud Nasiri a, Majeed Ghazvini b
a
Oil, Gas and Chemical Engineering Department, Semnan University Opposite Sukan Park, Semnan 35195363, Iran
b
Engineering Department, Shahroud Islamic Azad University End of Tehran Ave, Shahrood, Iran

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Article history: Biodiesel as an alternative fuel was produced by transesterification of Malaysian RBD (Refined, Bleached,
Received 4 October 2011 and Deodorized) palm oil with alkaline catalysts. Potassium and sodium hydroxide were used as catalysts
Received in revised form 15 January 2012 in this reaction at temperature of 60 8C in a stirred tank reactor with 600 rpm stirring. Gas
Accepted 25 January 2012
chromatography was used to determine the fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) contents in the produced
Available online 18 February 2012
biodiesel. Yield of reaction which was carried out with KOH as a catalyst is a higher value than the
reaction when NaOH was used as a catalyst. A second-order reaction mechanism which was purposed by
Keywords:
Leevijit et al. (2004) was applied to calculate the product concentrations. There was a good agreement
Biodiesel
between the methyl ester concentrations measured experimentally and what was predicted from the
Transesterification
Methyl ester kinetic model. Finally important fuel properties of produced biodiesels were obtained and compared with
RBD palm oil petro diesel and the ASTM standards which indicate that the biodiesel with acceptable quality was
Catalysts synthesized experimentally.
Crown Copyright ß 2012 Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights
reserved.

1. Introduction main advantages of using a strong alkali as a catalyst are shorter

Nowadays increasing in application of fossil fuels in different
fields caused increasing concern about using these fuels and what
happens after use or the global warming issues. In addition,
depletion of this great source of energy causes looking for
alternative and efficient fuels by many researchers. Indeed
removing disadvantages of conventional diesel fuel is another
relative subject. One of these alternative fuels is biodiesel, which
with respect to its benefits such as non-toxicity, biodegradability,
and renewability has attracted many views. In addition to these
benefits, greenhouse gas reduction and less pollution generation of
this type of fuel compared with other fuels are other major reasons
to use the biodiesel [1–3]. A life cycle analysis of the biodiesel
showed that the overall CO2 emissions were reduced by 78%
compared with the petroleum based diesel fuel [3,4].
Biodiesel or fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) is produced by the
transesterification reaction among vegetable oils, animal fats or
waste cooking oils with an alcohol in presence of a catalyst. A
strong alkali, a strong acid, and an enzyme are three kinds of
catalysts which can be used in the transesterification reaction. The
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +98 9125466376; fax: +98 2313354120.
E-mail addresses: shahbazi2004_teh@yahoo.com (M.R. Shahbazi),
bkhoshandam@semnan.ac.ir (B. Khoshandam), mnasiri@semnan.ac.ir (M. Nasiri),
majeed.ghazvini@gmail.com (M. Ghazvini).
reaction time and less amount of catalyst required in the
manufacturing process of the transesterification reaction. There-
fore a strong alkaline catalyst is widely used in the industry for
mass biodiesel production [3].
Many studies have been carried out to investigate the effects of
different parameters involved in the reaction, such as using
different oils and alcohols, alcohol to oil molar ratio, types and
amount of catalysts, reaction time or temperature [4–10]. In many
researches also the feasibility and effect of new processes, such as
carrying out the reaction under the microwave irradiation,
supercritical conditions and using ultrasonic mixing, have been
established [3,11–13]. Although nowadays the reaction under the
conventional heating in presence of alkaline catalysts is the most
common way to prepare biodiesel, all mentioned studies have
been established on accelerating the chemical reaction and finally
obtaining the higher reaction yields within a short time. Reporting
a conversion of 98.4% for the safflower oil to methyl ester at 6 min
assisted by microwave irradiation was shown that the process
under the microwave irradiation can be much faster than that
under the conventional heating [3]. Many studies have also
focused on the kinetics of transesterification reaction of different
feedstocks to find the optimum conditions and determine the
FAME compositions [14–18].
One of the most important issues on production of biodiesel is
its higher price compared with other fuels. The production cost is
affected by different factors. There is no doubt that the oil price is

1876-1070/$ – see front matter . Crown Copyright ß 2012 Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jtice.2012.01.009
 M.R. Shahbazi et al. / Journal of the Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers 43 (2012) 504–510
Nomenclature
A peak area
As peak area of standard solution
Cs concentration of standard solution
CN cetane number
DG diglyceride
FID flame ionization detector
GC gas chromatography
GL glycerin
k reaction rate constant of Eqs. (2)–(4) (L/mol s)
mi weight of component i
ME methyl ester
MG monoglyceride
MW molecular weight
ROH alcohol
RBD Refined, Bleached, Deodorized
TG triglyceride
wt% weight percent
Yester biodiesel content (%)
the main factor in production cost reduction [19]. Generally, all of
vegetable oils and animal fats can be used to produce biodiesel. The
most common ones are palm, sunflower, rapeseed, and soybean oil.
In some researches tallow and waste cooking oil also have been
used [20,21]. The amount of harvested crops and world supply of
palm, soybean, and rapeseed are shown in Table 1 [11].
As it is seen the palm oil can be the best choice compared with
others due to its higher efficiency and production rate with average
yields of 3.5–5.0  103 kg/ha/year.
Despite of having lower price, raw palm oil has some limitations
for transesterification reaction. The significant limitation is high free
fatty acid (FFA) of oil which makes force to use particular catalysts. In
case of using alkaline catalyst which is the most common catalyst for
transesterification, the glycerol and alcohol must be anhydrous with
minimum FFA, because water and FFA make the reaction partially
change to saponification which produces soap. The soap lowers the
yield of ester, renders separation of ester from glycerol, and makes
the water washing stage very difficult [1,10,22]. Therefore it leads to
higher washing and purifying expenses. To eliminate the undesir-
able effects of humidity and free fatty acids, it was recommended
that the amount of them in oil be kept below 0.5 wt% and 0.05 wt%,
respectively [10].
Raw palm oil also contains some useful components, such as
vitamin E, free fatty acids, cartonoides, phosphatides, and plant
sterols (almost 1%), which will be removed during refining process,
bleaching and deodorizing and can be reused. Also remaining palm
oil is more convenient than raw oil to produce biodiesel [11].
Generally, regarding with highly produced palm oil in the world
and different fatty acid compositions of oils depending on
geographical locations and environmental conditions, working
on palm oil transesterification reaction is considered logically.
Depletion of fossil fuels, increasing the request to energy in the
world and low capacity of petroleum refineries in Iran beside air
pollution in big cities made it necessary to find a renewable source
of energy like biodiesel. It would be difficult or even impossible to
provide sufficient need for oil seeds from the domestic agricultural
lands because of food production and nourishment value of edible
crops in a populated country like Iran. Palm oil produced in
Malaysia in Middle East can be a good source for biodiesel.
Malaysia is one of the biggest exporters of palm oil in such case that
its price in Iran can compete with other oils produced from
domestic cultivated crops.
505
In this work, biodiesel is produced by transesterification of
Malaysian RBD (Refined, Bleached, and Deodorized) palm oil with
methanol in presence of sodium and potassium hydroxide as
catalysts. Mass concentration of methyl ester and production yield
are investigated and checked with reaction kinetics prediction and
other previous works. The properties of biodiesel produced are
measured and compared with the ASTM standards for biodiesel
and the conventional diesel fuels.
2. Experimental
2.1. Materials
The used refined palm oil was purchased from ERAPOLY SDN
BHD, Malaysia. To produce RBD palm oil, further stages consist of
bleaching and deodorizing were done in Margarin Mfg. Co. in Iran.
In these complementary stages, remained impurities that can
interfere the reaction as mentioned before, will be decreased
significantly [22]. In this work the initial composition of palm oil
consisted of 96.3% triglyceride, 3.2% diglyceride, and 0.5%
monoglyceride. Gas chromatographic analysis of palm oil also
revealed that palmetic (42.56%), oleic (40.08%), linoleic (10.69%),
and stearic (4.76%) acids are the major fatty acids which altogether
comprised about 98% of the total fatty acids. Acidity number and
humidity which could have negative effects on the yield of reaction
were decreased to 0.1 mg KOH/g oil and 0.03 wt%, respectively,
after passing from the refining stages. Methanol, sodium hydrox-
ide, potassium hydroxide, and hydrochloric acid were prepared in
analytical grade from the Merck Co. Also n-hexane as the solvent,
methyl myristate as the internal standard, methyl palmitate,
methyl stearate, and other reference standards in more than 99%
purity were taken from the Sigma Chemical Co.
2.2. Instruments
The transesterification reaction was carried out in a 1-L two-
necked flask reactor equipped with a condenser similar to set up
used in F. Ma’s work [23]. The reactor was heated up on a hot plate
that kept at temperature of 60  0.5 8C along the experiments. A
magnetic stirrer with a constant speed (600 rpm) provided the mixing
requirements.
2.3. Method
Biodiesel derived from the RBD palm oil was prepared by
reacting 500 g of oil with 113.2 g CH3OH (6:1 molar ratio) and 5 g
catalyst (1 wt%). Oil was heated up to 60 8C (5–10 8C less than the
methanol boiling point) and kept on this temperature in the
reactor. Required amount of catalyst was dissolved completely in a
known amount of methanol in a separate container and was added
to the reactor while stirring with agitation speed of 600 rpm. The
reaction was carried out for 60 min under the reflux at 60 8C. The
optimum conditions of the reaction were set as those reported in
the literatures [16,24,25].
The reactor was equipped with reflux condenser to condense
back the methanol escaping from the reaction mixture. After
passing 60 min, the reaction reaches to the equilibrium condition
and the mixture was neutralized (pH of about 7.0) with
hydrochloric acid. Then the mixture was cooled immediately to
the room temperature by putting the reactor in the ice bath at
about 5 8C. In the separation section of the experiment, the solution
was poured into a decanter and was then held at least for 12 h to
produce two phases: ester phase and glycerol phase. The phase
separation can be observed within the first 10 min of settling.
During this time, the ester layer was opaque and shows an
incomplete separation. The opaque ester layer replaced by a
506 M.R. Shahbazi et al. / Journal of the Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers 43 (2012) 504–510

Table 1 k1
TG þ ROH @ DG þ ME (2)
Products from the harvested crops and world supply of vegetable oils [11]. k2

Palm Soybean Rapeseed

k3
9
2003/04 world supply of oil (10 kg/yr) 29.7 29.85 14.2 DG þ ROH @ MG þ ME (3)
2005/06 world supply of oil (109 kg/yr) 34.8 33.87 16.59 k4
Crops harvested (103 kg/ha) 19.1 2.3 3
Oil produced (103 kg/ha) 4.8 0.4 1.2 k5
MG þ ROH @ GL þ ME (4)
k6

transparent one if more times have been given for settling. Usually, where ROH shows one mole of alcohol consumed in the reactions.
the complete separation could take as long as 8–18 h. The methyl Based on the kinetic studies of transesterification reaction, it
ester which was the upper layer in the decanter was washed three was supposed that the production of methyl ester is just via the
times with the warm distilled water to remove excess methanol, above mechanism and there is no direct conversion of reactant to
catalyst, and remained glycerol. In the washing stage, water to the final product. Therefore, the general form of the governing set
methyl ester ratio was considered to be 2:1.Washed biodiesel was of second-order rate equations, characterizing the above reactions
dried using heating up approximately to 110 8C in an open for transesterification of palm oil, without shunt reaction, is
container until making sure that no more steam rises from it. written as follows:
Indeed the heating process can also drive off any traces of moisture d½TG
and remained methanol [24]. Finally the mixture was filtrated and ¼ k1 ½TG½ROH þ k2 ½DG½ME (5)
dt
cooled down to the room temperature and the pure biodiesel was
stored for any further tests. d½DG
¼ k1 ½TG½ROH  k2 ½DG½ME  k3 ½DG½ROH
dt
2.4. Analysis þ k4 ½MG½ME (6)

The gas chromatography analyzer (Shimadzu 2010 Brand)

d½MG
equipped with a flame ionization detector (FID) and a capillary ¼ k3 ½DG½ROH  k4 ½MG½ME  k5 ½MG½ROH
dt
column (SP 2330 polar column – 2  60 m – ID: 0.32 mm; Supelco
Inc.) was used for analyzing the produced biodiesel. Helium was þ k6 ½GL½ME (7)
used as an inert carrier gas at a flow rate of 1 ml/min. Oven
temperature started at 160 8C, kept for 5 min, and then it increased d½GL
¼ k5 ½MG½ROH  k6 ½GL½ME (8)
to 210 8C at a rate of 2 8C/min and held at this temperature for dt
10 min. Methyl myristate and n-hexane were used as internal
standard and solvent, respectively [26]. d½ME
¼ k1 ½TG½ROH  k2 ½DG½ME þ k3 ½DG½ROH
The FAME content (mass concentration) in the product was dt
measured by the GC analysis according to the EN 14103 test  k4 ½MG½ME þ k5 ½MG½ROH  k6 ½GL½ME (9)
method [27]. In this test method the methyl heptadecanoate and n-
heptane were replaced with methyl myristate and n-hexane as d½ROH d½ME
¼ (10)
internal standard and solvent, respectively. To measure the dt dt
biodiesel content in the final product, a standard solution was
where k1 to k6 are the reaction rate constants and the bracket
prepared as 10 mg/ml methyl myristate with hexane solution at
denotes the concentration.
first. Then 250 mg of the sample was added to 5 ml of standard
To evaluate our work, the molar concentration of methyl ester
solution and the mixture was injected to the GC column.
at the end of the reaction was compared with what was predicted
Different standard tests were applied to measure some of the
from the kinetic model. The system of ordinary differential
important physical properties of the produced biodiesel. The EN
equations has been solved using MATLAB software based on the
ISO 3675 [28] for density measurement, ASTM D445 [29] for
ODE45 command.
kinematic viscosity measurement, ASTM D93 [30] for flash point
To calculate the weight of one mole of RBD palm oil, average
measurement, EN ISO 660 [31] for acidity number measurement,
molecular weight of oil has been determined using the fatty acid
and ASTM 2709 [32] for humidity measurement were applied. The
compositions by the following equation [19]:
cetane number was also calculated from the correlation (1) given
X
in [33]. MWester ¼ 3ð ð%mi  MWi ÞÞ þ 38 (11)

CN ¼ 33:6 þ 0:539ðC18 : 0Þ þ 0:303ðC18 : 1Þ þ 0:0878ðC18
: 2Þ þ 0:233ðC22 : 1Þ
where CN indicates the cetane number and (C18:0), (C18:1),
(C18:2), (C22:1) are mass concentration of stearic, oleic, linoleic,
and erucic acids, respectively.
3. Product predictions using the reaction kinetics
The kinetics mechanism of the transesterification reaction can
be presented as a three stepwise reversible reactions. Two
intermediates of diglyceride (DG) and monoglyceride (MG) and
one mole of methyl ester (ME) in each step are produced. Indeed
one mole of glycerin (GL) in the third stage is produced. The three
stepwise reversible reactions are as follows [15,16]:
where MWi and mi are the oil molecular weight and the percentage
(1) of fatty acid i in the raw material, respectively. The constant value
of 38 is the summation of atomic weights of carbon and hydrogen
atoms in the triglyceride structure (C3H2) without considering
three fatty acids (RCOOH).
Using the known values of methanol to oil molar ratio and their
molecular weights, the initial molar concentrations of methanol
and oil were calculated as 4.9614 mol/L and 0.8269 mol/L,
respectively. Therefore by using triglyceride, diglyceride, and
monoglyceride concentrations which mentioned in Section 2.1, the
initial molar concentrations of them were obtained as 0.7963047,
0.0264608, and 0.0041345 mol/L, respectively. Methyl ester and
glycerin concentrations at the beginning of reaction also were
considered to be zero. The reaction rate constants are presented in
Table 2 [15].
 M.R. Shahbazi et al. / Journal of the Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers 43 (2012) 504–510
Table 2
The reaction rate constants (L/mol s) [15].
k1
k2
k3
k4
k5
k6
Fig. 1. The concentration profiles of methyl ester (ME), methanol (MeOH), glycerol
(GL), triglyceride (TG), diglyceride (DG), and monoglyceride (MG) during the
transesterification of palm oil at temperature of 60 8C, methanol/oil molar ratio of
6:1, catalyst concentration of 1 wt% oil and mixing speed of 600 rpm.
Fig. 1 shows the typical concentration profile for each
component in transesterification of palm oil at 60 8C as a function
of time. This figure shows the rate of consumption of triglyceride
and formation of methyl ester and glycerin as well as the
intermediate compounds. The rate of consumption of alcohol
and its extra value also have been shown. The results revealed that
the production rate of methyl ester at the beginning of reaction is
fast in such manner that the molar concentration of methyl ester
reaches to an equilibrium constant value of 2.41 mol/L at about
22 min.
4. Results and discussions
The FAME content (Yester) was determined based on the GC
results as follows [34]:
P  
A  As CsV s
Y ester ð%Þ ¼ 100
As m optimum conditions was calculated as 81% and 90% for two types
P
where A is the summation of the GC peak areas for all methyl
esters (C14:0–C24:1), As is the increasing amount of the GC peak
area of methyl myristate after adding standard solution, Cs is the
concentration of standard solution as 10 mg/ml, Vs is the volume of
standard solution (5 ml), and m is the amount of sample (250 mg).
Based on this relation, methyl ester contents in the final biodiesels
were calculated as 88 and 93 wt% for cases when NaOH and KOH
used as catalyst, respectively. This value obtained as 97–98% for
Karanja oil (a non-edible oil) transesterification with methanol and
KOH as a catalyst under the optimized conditions [35].
Fig. 2(a)–(c) shows the chromatograms of fatty acid of feedstock
and produced biodiesel by transesterification of palm oil using
potassium hydroxide and sodium hydroxide as catalyst mixed
with the standard solution. The results of analysis have been given
in Table 3.
As it is given in Table 3, according to the gas chromatographic
analysis there are no significant changes in the concentration of
507
fatty acid methyl esters after 60 min of reaction. Therefore it
indicates that the amount of different fatty acids did not change
1.057  102 during the transesterification reaction, and just fatty acids convert
0.000
to methyl esters.
1.184  101
8.187  102 The molar concentration of methyl ester per unit volume of
1.310  101 solution was measured using the biodiesel content in the final
2.011  103 product and molecular weight of the esters. Also the average
molecular weight of methyl esters is calculated from the following
equation [19]:
X
MWester ¼ ðMWi  %mi Þ þ 14 (13)
where MWi and %mi are the molecular weight and the weight
percent of fatty acid i obtained from the GC analysis, respectively,
and constant value of 14 is the molecular weight of CH2 in the
methyl ester molecular structure without considering the fatty
acid.
The methyl ester concentrations in two cases of using NaOH and
KOH as catalyst were measured experimentally as 2.31 mol/L and
2.43 mol/L, respectively, after 60 min. There is a good agreement
between the experimental results and what was predicted from
the kinetic model when using the rate constants of Table 2.
Therefore a second-order kinetic mechanism using the mentioned
reaction rate constants can justify the palm oil transesterification
reaction, properly. Mathematical models that used for kinetic
studies can be applied to predict the product concentrations,
design the experiments, and optimize the biodiesel production
processes. The kinetics of palm transesterification reaction studied
by different researchers and the second-order kinetics presented
for this reaction [15,16]. The second-order kinetics proposed on
transesterification reaction of soybean, sunflower, brassica car-
inata oils as well [14,36–38]. In some studies the mass transfer
controlling step on the rate of transesterification reaction was
investigated and the sigmoidal kinetics shape was analyzed
[39,40]. The kinetics of transesterification reaction of triglycerides
with methanol was compared with interesterification reaction
with methyl acetate in a recent work [41]. In this study 15
reactions including the transesterification reactions with second-
order kinetics scheme were considered.
At last the biodiesel conversion can be calculated as [42]
ðmB =MWB ÞY ester
conversionð%Þ ¼ (14)
ðmO =3ðMWO ÞÞ
where Yester is the biodiesel content, m is the weight, MW is the
molecular weight, and subscripts O and B show the oil and
biodiesel, respectively.
The conversion of RBD palm oil to biodiesel at mentioned
(12)
of produced biodiesels using NaOH and KOH as catalyst,
respectively. The biodiesel produced using potassium hydroxide
as a catalyst shows that the higher conversion of palm oil
transesterification as is in good agreement with what was reported
by Meher et al. [25] on higher transesterification conversion of
soybean oil with potassium hydroxide as a catalyst. Rashid and
Anwar [5] reported the yield of 95–96% in a process of
transesterification of rapeseed oil after the reaction time of
120 min and at temperature of 65 8C with other conditions same as
the present work. Comparing different catalysts, they also
concluded that the potassium hydroxide was the best catalyst.
Indeed Darnoko and Cheryan [16] reported 87 wt% and 90 wt% for
palm oil methyl ester concentrations in 50 8C and 65 8C in the
presence of KOH as the catalyst, respectively, which are
comparable with the results obtained in the present work. As it
is seen the results agree well with those achieved by the other
researchers. The biodiesel yield was reported as 97% for virgin oils
of sunflower and soybean [43], 92% and 89.8% for waste frying and
508 M.R. Shahbazi et al. / Journal of the Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers 43 (2012) 504–510

Fig. 2. The GC chromatograms of (a) RBD palm oil, (b) biodiesel, using NaOH as a catalyst mixed with the standard solution, (c) biodiesel, using KOH as a catalyst mixed with
the standard solution.

cooking oil [43,44] when alkali catalyst used in the course of the As the major characteristic of the fuels, the kinematic viscosity
transesterification reaction. of the produced biodiesels was measured and reported in Table 4
The quality of synthesized alkyl esters was evaluated by based on the method presented in the ASTM standard D445 [29].
measuring some important fuel properties and comparing with the As it is reported, the values are in an acceptable range of 1.9–
ASTM standards for biodiesel and the properties of conventional 6 mm2/s. High viscosity leads to the poor atomization of the fuel,
diesel fuel. The quality of biodiesel is significant from the engine incomplete combustion, choking of fuel injectors, ring carboniza-
point of view. Different factors have been specified to check the tion, and accumulation of fuel in the lubricating fluid. The ASTM
quality. The results have been given in Table 4. D93 [30] was applied for the flash point calculation. The flash point
is a very important parameter to consider in the handling, storage
Table 3 and safety of fuels and flammable materials. The higher values in
Fatty acid compositions in RBD palm oil and produced biodiesel in presence of flash point mean the risks of fire to be decreased. The acid number
NaOH and KOH as a catalyst.
of produced biodiesels was measured as acceptable values in
FAME RBD palm oil After using NaOH After using KOH comparison with the maximum acid value of 0.5 mg KOH/g
Myristic (C14:0) *
1.06 1.14 1.0 reported in the ASTM D6751 [46] on biodiesel standards. Another
Palmitic (C16:0) 42.56 42.04 42.54 important qualified parameters for biodiesels are water and the
Palmitoleic (C16:1) 0.21 0.14 0.16 sediment content. Water in the biodiesel can promote the
Stearic (C18:0) 4.76 4.43 4.39
microbial growth and leads to the corrosion and formation of
Oleic (C18:1) 40.08 39.97 39.83
Linoleic (C18:2) 10.69 11.74 11.60 emulsions and also causes the fuel hydrolysis and oxidation. The
Linolenic (C18:3) 0.53 0.44 0.39 results of testing the humidity in the present work were obtained
Arachidic (C20:0) 0.11 0.09 0.08 based on the ASTM D6751 [46]. The ASTM D976 was applied to the
*
Numbers in parenthesis indicate the numbers of carbons and unsaturated calculation of the cetane index for biodiesel produced in the
bonds. presence of KOH as catalyst. The cetane index was measured as
 M.R. Shahbazi et al. / Journal of the Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers 43 (2012) 504–510
Table 4
Physical properties of produced biodiesels and conventional diesel.
Property Palm oil
2
Kinematic viscosity (40 8C) (mm /s) 39.4
Flash point (8C) 256
Density (g cm3) 0.881
Acid number (mg KOH/g) 0.1
Water and sediment (vol %) 0.03
Cetane numberb 40
a
Ref. [45].
b
Calculated from the correlation presented in Ref. [33] using fatty acid methyl esters profiles.
c
Measured by The National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company (NIOPDC).
49.5 that is very close to what was calculated from the correlation
(1). The minimum value of cetane number based on the ASTM
D6751 [46] is 47, that fulfilled the values obtained in the present
work. Therefore the properties of produced biodiesel in the present
work were found within the limits of standards.
5. Conclusions
The Malaysian palm oil as a good source of FAME was used to
produce biodiesel in the present work. Sodium and potassium
hydroxides were used as catalysts in the transesterification
reaction. The potassium hydroxide was a better catalyst to reach
to the higher yields on the transesterification of palm oil. Indeed
the conversion of Malaysian palm oil to the produced biodiesel
shows higher value than that reported by the other researches
regarding to the operating temperature. The molar concentration
of fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) was compared with what was
predicted from a second-order kinetics model that it justified the
results of the present work at the time duration of 60 min.
The kinematic viscosity, flash point, and the cetane number of
the produced biodiesel were measured and showed as acceptable
values based on the ASTM standards. The biodiesel properties also
were compared with the conventional diesel fuel properties and it
shows that the synthesized biodiesel has the properties compara-
ble with the conventional diesel fuel and can be considered as an
alternative to mix with it and use in motors.
Acknowledgments
We would like to appreciate the research laboratory operators
of Margarin Mfg. Co. for the gas chromatography analyses. Indeed
many thanks to the personnel of research laboratory of Tarbiat
Modarres University for measuring the flash point and the
kinematic viscosity of the produced biodiesel.
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509
ASTM Stand. Using NaOH Using KOH Petro diesela
1.9–6 4.59 4.61 3.06
Min. 130 164 166 69
– 0.875 0.876 0.855
Max. 0.5 0.24 0.16 0.11
Max. 0.050 0.042 0.036 –
Min. 47 49.13 49.05 50
49.5c
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