Microwave Assisted Transesterification Reaction Kinetics of Biodiesel from Jatropha Oil

Abstract

Biodiesel has become an important alternative green fuel to diminish the use of fossil fuel. In this paper, biodiesel was produced by microwave assisted transesterification of Jatropha curcas oil. Transesterification was varied in temperature of 45-65oC and time of 2-6 minutes. Ratio of methanol and oil was fixed as 7.5:1, while the KOH concentration was 1.5% from the total mass of oil and methanol. Conversion of Jatropha oil into biodiesel was evaluated by analyzing the concentration of produced methyl ester using GC-FID. In this study, reaction rate constant and activation energy of microwave-assisted esterification were calculated and evaluated in detail. The average reaction rate constant for the temperature of 65, 60, 55, 50, and 45 oC were 1,222; 1,930; 2,002; 1,666; and 1,608 L/mol.minutes, respectively. The activation energy of this microwave assisted esterification was 18.91 kJ/mol, which was lower than that of using direct heating, 28.8 kJ/mol.