Faktor-Faktor yang Mempengaruhi Produksi Biodiesel dari Minyak Sawit Mentah Menggunakan Katalis Padat Kalsium Karbonat yang Dipijarkan

The demand for petroleum has increased recently due to the increase of world population, industries andtransportation. Biodiesel (fatty acids methyl esters) has become attractive because of high price of petroleum,limited recourses of crude oil, and environmental concerns. Most biodiesel is produced by transesterification oftriglycerides of refined/edible type oils using methanol and homogeneous catalyst such NaOH and KOH. The useof heterogeneous calcined CaCO3 catalyst, has advantages such as the ease of phase separation betweencatalyst and biodiesel. This paper presents factors affecting the synthesis of biodiesel from crude palm using thecalcined CaCO3 catalyst . The synthesis is carried out by two steps, the acid-catalyzed pre-esterification of free-fatty acid and followed by base-catalyzed transesterification of triglycerides. A study of optimizing the reactioncondition of the esterification followed by transesterification of crude palm oil (CPO) is performed to obtainmaximum production of biodiesel. Under conditions of catalyst calcination temperature of 9000C, reactor time of1.5 hours, catalyst dosage of 1,5%, reaction temperature of 700C and methanol/oil molar ratio of 9 : 1, the oilconversion is 74,6%. The as-synthesized biodiesel meets the requirements of Indonesian National Standard (SNI)for biodiesel.

Ultrasound Assisted Esterification of Rubber Seed Oil for Biodiesel Production

Production of biodiesel is currently shifting from the first to the second generation inwhich the raw materials are mostly from non-edible type oils and fats. Biodiesel production iscommonly conducted under batch operation using mechanical agitation to accelerate masstransfers. The main drawback of oil esterification is the high content of free fatty acids (FFA) whichmay reduce the yield of biodiesel and prolong the production time (2-5 hours). Ultrasonificationhas been used in many applications such as component extraction due to its ability to producecavitation under certain frequency. This research is aimed to facilitate ultrasound system forimproving biodiesel production process particularly rubber seed oil. An ultrasound unit was usedunder constant temperature (40oC) and frequency of 40 Hz. The result showed that ultrasound canreduces the processing time and increases the biodiesel yield significantly. A model to describecorrelation of yield and its independent variables is yield (Y) = 43,4894 – 0,6926 X1 + 1,1807 X2 –7,1042 X3 + 2,6451 X1X2 – 1,6557 X1X3 + 5,7586 X2X3 - 10,5145 X1X2X3, where X1 is mesh sizes, X2ratio oil: methanol and X3 type of catalyst.