Abstract:
One source of vegetable oil that hasn’t been used and generated from sortation process in palm oil mill is off-grade oil palm fruit. Availability of off-grade oil palm fruit is about 7-10% for a Palm Oil Mill with capacity 30 ton per hour and has potential to cause environmental pollution. The objective of this research were to produce biodiesel from off-grade oil palm fruit by two step reaction, to characterize and to study the effect of transesterification process condition such as, concentration of NaOH catalyst, molar ratio of methanol to oil and reaction temperature on yield, acid number, density and viscosity of biodiesel. Experimental design determined by Central Composite Design (CCD) with three variables. The impact of process condition to responses were analyzed using a statistical software (Design Expert 6.0). The result showed that the highest yield of biodiesel obtained is 93,45% with molar ratio of methanol to oil of 10:1, reaction temperature at 50°C and 0,75% (w/w) of NaOH. The most influence factor are concentration of NaOH catalyst and reaction temperature. The characteristic of biodiesel such as acid value, density, viscosity and flash point has met the standard biodiesel of Indonesia. In this research, various process conditions is not significantly affected the characteristics of biodiesel.
