Production and quality characterization of biodiesel produced from green coconut Pulp

Abstract

Brazil is one of the largest producers and consumers of green coconut in the world, with thousands of units harvested and destined for retail, wholesale and mainly for the bottling industries and fresh consumption in the beach regions, as its water basically represents the greatest source of interest. According to consumers, coconuts, after being consumed in water, are mostly destined for dumps and sanitary landfills that accumulate material annually, with a very voluminous shell and a decomposition time of up to 10 years. Note the possibility of obtaining oil and biodiesel from the pulp, thus being able to obtain a low cost oil for the production of biodiesel. The project in question seeks to carry out characterization tests of the density and specific mass and oxidation time of the Biodiesel obtained from the residual oil. The extraction of oil from the coconut pulp was performed using hexane from the Soxhlet extractor. Thus, it was verified that the percentages of extractive yield between 35 and 37% in oil mass, the results of acidity 0.37 mg KOH/g, density 0.887 kg/dm3 and specific mass 75.78%, meeting the ANP parameters for oils, coconut oil was later used for the synthesis of biodiesel from transesterification with a basic catalyst (KOH), at 45ºC, the time of oxidative stability of biodiesel was measured in a rancimeter, obtaining a time of 6h, being considered average, necessary the addition of stabilizers, while the dry coconut biodiesel exceeded the maximum analysis time of 12 hours, being even more stable.