Kinetic study of preparation of biodiesel from crude rubber seed oil over a modified heterogeneous catalyst

Abstract

A detailed study of kinetics in transesterification of non edible crude rubber seed oil using calcium oxide, CaO prepared from waste eggshells as catalyst has been carried out. Egg shells are generally waste materials which several researches had reported to contain high content of calcium oxide. Utilization of these waste materials as catalysts reduces catalyst cost, promotes environment friendly process and also serves as a source of income if the biodiesel is to be commercialized. Transesterification reactions are carried out and the yield and conversion of the product are optimized by varying the methanol to oil molar ratio, catalyst amount, reaction temperature, and time. A biodiesel conversion of 98.58% is obtained with a yield of 89.12%. The reaction follows pseudo-first order kinetics. The activation energy (E_a) is 79 kJ/ mol and the frequency factor (A) is 2.98 * 10¹⁰ min^-1.