Ratna Dewi Kusumaningtyas, - (2017) Kinetics Study of Jatropha Oil Esterification with Ethanol in the Presence of Tin (II) Chloride Catalyst for Biodiesel Production. AIP Conference Proceedings, 1788 (1). pp. 1-7. ISSN ISSN (P): 0094-243X ISSN (e): 1551-7616 ISBN: 978-0-7354-1452-5

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Abstract

Jatropha oil is one of the promising feedstocks for biodiesel production. Jatropha oil is non-edible oil hence utilization of this oil would not compete with the needs of food. However, crude jatropha oil usually has high free fatty acid (FFA) content. Due to this fact, direct alkaline-catalyzed transesterification of crude jatropha oil for biodiesel production cannot be performed. FFA in crude jatropha oil will react with a base catalyst, resulting in soap as by product and hindering methyl ester (biodiesel) production. Therefore, prior to a transesterification reaction, it is crucial to run a pretreatment step of jatropha oil which can lower the FFA content in the oil. In this work, the pretreatment process was conducted through the esterification reaction of FFA contained in crude jatropha oil with ethanol over tin (II) chloride catalyst to reduce the acid value of the feedstock. The feedstock was Indonesia crude jatropha oil containing 12.03% of FFA. The esterification reaction was carried out in a batch reactor with a molar ratio of FFA to ethanol was 1:60 and total reaction time was 180 minutes. Tin (II) chloride catalyst was varied at 2.5, 5, 7.5, and 10% wt, whereas the effect of the reaction temperature was studied at 35, 34, 55, and 65 qC. The best reaction conversion was 71.55%, achieved at the following condition: a reaction temperature of 65 qC, catalyst concentration of 10% wt, the reaction time of 180 min, and the molar ratio of FFA to ethanol was 1:60. Kinetics study was also conducted in this work. It was found that esterification reaction of jatropha oil FFA with ethanol catalyzed by tin(II) chloride fitted the first-order pseudo- homogeneous kinetics model. It was also revealed that the frequency factor (A) and the activation energy (Ea) were 4.3864 x 106 min-1 and 56.2513 kJ/mole, respectively.

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