Interesterification Process of Palm Oil Into Biodiesel with Co-solvent Methyl Esters

Abstract

One alternative energy that is currently being developed is fatty acid methyl ester (FAME), commonly known as biodiesel. The process of making biodiesel which has so far been carried out is a process of transesterification with alcohol where the byproduct produced is glycerol. Glycerol must be completely separated from biodiesel since it will interfere with engine performance. The method used to produce biodiesel in this study was interesterification. In the interesterification reaction, vegetable oil is reacted with methyl acetate instead of methyl alcohol, which results in triacetin byproduct. Separation of the remaining triacetin from biodiesel is not necessary since it is useful as an additive to biodiesel. To increase the solubility of the reactants, a co-solvent methyl ester is a good choice since it is a reaction product itself. Hence, it does not need a separation process. The operating conditions of the study were reaction temperature 60⁰C, molar ratio of palm oil:methyl acetate = 1:6, reaction time 1 hour, co-solvent mass of 15% oil mass, KOH catalyst mass (0; 0.25; 0.5; 0.75 1% mass of oil) and stirring speed (600,800,1000 rpm). The results demonstrated that the optimum concentration of biodiesel was 4.80%, obtained at a catalyst mass of 0.5% at a stirring speed of 600 rpm. The optimum yield of 5.56% was obtained at a catalyst mass of 0.5% and a stirring speed of 600 rpm. It can be concluded that the optimum condition of the research were: the catalyst mass 0.5%, stirring speed 600 rpm, reaction temperature 60⁰C, reaction time 1 hour, and molar ratio of oil:methyl acetate were 1:6, respectively.