Biodiesel production from Mahua (Madhuca indica) oil
Student name: Ms Swati Singh
Guide: Dr V V N Kishore
Year of completion: 2007
Host Organisation: TERI
Abstract: Recent concerns over the environment, increasing fuel prices and scarcity of its supply have promoted the interest in development of the alternative sources of petroleum fuels.
Among the variety of alternative fuels biodiesel is most preferred, as its chemical characteristics resembles with that of petro-diesel.
At present biodiesel is mostly produced on commercial scale from the refined edible vegetable oils such as sunflower oil, palm oil and soybean oil etc., by alkaline-catalyzed esterification process. To make biodiesel economically viable we have to use unrefined and non-edible vegetable oils for biodiesel production. But alkaline-catalyzed esterification process is not suitable for production of biodiesel from unrefined
non-edible vegetable oils because of their high free fatty acid value.
In this study a two-step esterification method is used to produce biodiesel from high free fatty acid Mahua (Madhuca indica) oil. The biodiesel production method consists of acid-catalyzed pre-treatment followed by an alkaline-catalyzed transesterification. The effect of acid concentration, reaction time and reaction temperature on the reduction of free fatty acid content of Mahua oil during its pre-treatment was studied. The optimum combination for reducing the acid value of Mahua oil to less than 1% during pre-treatment is 6:1 molar ratioof methanol and oil, 4.5% w/w H2SO4 as acid catalyst, reaction temperature 60º C and reaction time was 4 Hr.
After the pre-treatment of Mahua oil, transesterification reaction was carried out with 6:1 molar ratio of methanol and oil and 1.5% w/w KOH as base catalyst, with reaction time of 2 Hr and reaction temperature at 60º C to produce biodiesel.
