African Pear Seed Oil Methanolysis Catalyzed by Thermally Activated Clay

Abstract

The heterogeneously catalysed transesterification reaction for the production of biodiesel from African pear seed oil (APO) was investigated. The oil was extracted from the seeds using n-hexane by solvent extraction and characterized to determine its physio-chemical properties. Heterogeneous catalyst synthesized by thermally activating clay in a muffle furnace at a temperature of 800oC for 1hr was used to examine the effect of time, temperature, methanol/oil molar ratio, catalyst concentration and agitation speed on the biodiesel yield. The activated catalyst was characterized to determine its elemental compositions and physio-chemical properties. The results obtained showed that the thermally activated clay catalyst, TACperformed as montmorillonite clay with characteristic property of Bronsted and Lewis acid. The TAC was able to convert APO to standard biodieselwith the variation of catalyst concentration, temperature methanol, speed and reaction time having significant effect in the production. About 78-80% biodiesel production was obtained with 10:1 methanol/oil molar ratio, 3wt% TAC catalyst concentration, time 3hrs, speed 300rpm and at 60oC temperature. Hence the production of biodiesel from non edible oil APO with cheap and available heterogeneous catalyst (TAC) is achievable