Extraction and Production of Biodiesel from Baobab Seed Oil using Cao/Al-Mcm-41 as a Solid Based Catalyst

Abstract

Production of biodiesel as a renewable, biodegradable, and environmentally friendly fuel for use in diesel engines. It can overwhelm the problems related to fossil fuels such as their non-renewability, poisoning nature, and its global policy which is a matter of distress to many nations. The biodiesel was produced from the baobab (Adansonia digitate tata) seed oil removed using Soxhlet setup with methanol to oil ratio of 6:1 (v/v), using CaO/Al-MCM-41 mesoporous structure as a synthesized solidly based catalyst which was confirmed by X-Ray Fluorescence spectroscopy and N2 adsorption-desorption analysis were the basicity of the catalyst was found to be increasing due to addition of CaO nano-particles, the reaction was optimized at 1 g catalyst amount at 90 min and 55 ℃ reaction condition, the results obtained show high biodiesel yield of 74 %. It was clear that the produced biodiesel formed was confirmed by the GC-MS analysis. In this research, in the transesterification reaction, the acid value was found to drop less than 1% and the oil conversion using a solid base-catalyzed reaction reveals that CaO/Al-MCM-41 such a catalyst shows a catalytic performance. Abundantly underutilized available seed oils have been explored to produce biodiesel. The baobab seed examined in this work has been shown to contain oil in reasonable amounts from the work conducted, the produced biodiesel can be used for many required purposes