Abstract: This work was aimed at reduction of time, energy and material consumption of transesterification reaction by introduction of cosolvent to overcome this mass transfer resistance. The oil was characterized and its properties were found to conform to those of the literature. The GC-MS analysis of the raw oil indicates that the major fatty acids were; palmitic acid (15.86%), Oleic acid (37.13%), linoleic acid (37.24%) and stearic acid (9.76%), this indicates that the major fatty acids are unsaturated acids. The work uses full factorial design of experiment to investigate the main and interaction effects of five factors (varied at two levels of high and low) affecting transesterification. Methanol/oil molar ratio (41.49%) was found to be the most significant effect followed by catalyst concentration (30.54%), temperature (8.05%), and time (1.45%). For the interaction effects, the interaction of methanol/oil molar ratio with catalyst concentration (1.52%) was found to be most significant interaction this was then followed by the interaction of temperature and methanol/oil molar ratio (1.30%). However, the effect of methanol/cosolvent volume ratio was found to be insignificant. The model equations developed were subjected to some constrains and an optimum yield of 69.40% was obtained at 3.85 minutes, 600C, 0.5% catalyst concentration, 6:1 methanol/oil molar ratio and 1:1 methanol/cosolvent volume ratio. The GC-MS analysis of samples produced at various conditions with least time confirms the formation of fatty acid methyl ester and the properties of the biodiesel produced at the optimum conditions were found to conform to ASTM D6751-02 B100.Abstract: This work was aimed at reduction of time, energy and material consumption of transesterification reaction by introduction of cosolvent to overcome this mass transfer resistance. The oil was characterized and its properties were found to conform to those of the literature. The GC-MS analysis of the raw oil indicates that the major fatty acids were; ...Show More
