THE EFFECT OF OIL-METHANOL MOLAR RATIO AND REACTION TIME ON THE SYNTHESIS OF BIODIESEL USING SODIUM ACETAT ACTIVATED CLAY HETEROGENEOUS CATALYST

Abstract

Biodiesel is mainly produced from vegetable oils or animal fats by the method of transesterification reaction using catalysts. Many heterogeneous solid acid and base catalysts have been studied for the transesterification of various vegetables oils. In this study the transesterification of vegetables oil to fatty acid methyl esters was studied using sodium acetat activated clay catalyst. The catalyst was prepared by adding 200ml CH3COONa 1M to 10gr clay, stirred, washed and calcined at 300oC for 3 hours. The transesterification reaction was performed with variation of the oil-methanol molar ratio and reaction time. Furthermore, the quality of biodiesel produced were characterized by ASTM (American Society for Testing Materials) method i.e. viscosity, flash point, carbon residue, cetane number and acid number, and the analysis result was compared with standardize (SNI). Free Fatty Acid (FFA) of waste cooking oil before synthesis was also calculated. It was found that the maximal production of biodiesel which is 78,033% when the oil-methanol molar ratio is 1:6 and 8 hours of transesterification. The characterizations of biodiesel produced have no significant different and all of those were in the range of Standar Nasional Indonesia (SNI)