Benefits Of Biodiesel

Biodiesel obtained from renewable feedstocks, such vegetable oil or animal fats, for use in compression ignition engines, is the mono-alkyl esters of long chain fatty acids (Barnwal and Sharma 2005). Biodiesel is considered as representative as possible of diesel fuel often consists of methyl esters of fatty acids that can be made from triglycerides in vegetable oils by transesterification with methanol. Biodiesel that occurs rather resembles conventional diesel fuel in its main characteristics. The advantages of the oils are that the raw materials used in production, it is natural and renewable. These types of oils derived from vegetable or animal, making it biodegradable and non-toxic. (Marchetti et al. 2007).

The plant oils usually contain

Moisture and effect of free fatty acid

Moisture and free fatty acid is an important parameter in defining the viability of the transesterification process of vegetable oils. To perform the catalytic reaction to completion; is free fatty acid (FFA) less than 3% is needed. The higher acidity of the oil is smaller than the conversion efficiency. Either excess, as well as an inadequate amount of catalyst, may cause the formation of soap.

The starting materials are used for the base-catalyzed alcoholysis should respond certain requirements. The triglyceride should reduce the acid value and the materials ought to be significantly anhydrous. Apart from more sodium hydroxide catalysts compensate for higher acidity. But the soap that occurs due to the increase in the viscosity or the formation of a gel interference in response as well as the separation of glycerol. When the reaction conditions do not satisfy the requirements above, ester yield is significantly reduced. Methoxide and hydroxide of sodium or potassium should be preserved in a state that no water. Prolonged exposed to the air will reduce the efficiency of these catalysts through interaction with moisture and carbon

600C and yield of approximately 80% were observed after 1 minute for soy and sunflower oil. After 1 h the conversion was nearly identical for all four oil (93 98%) (Maher, Vidya Sagar et al. 2006). The result of reaction time is to study the transesterification of beef tallow with methanol. The reaction is very slow at the first minute because of mixing and dispersion of methanol into beef tallow, from one to five minutes, the reaction proceeds very rapidly. Production of Beef Tallow methyl ester reached the highest value about 15 minutes. (Ma and Hanna