Abstract:
Crude Palm Oil off-grade (CPO off-grade), a CPO product contains high free
fatty acid‘s content (FFA > 5%). This oil is produced from Palm fruit off-grade
which have categorized includes abnormal size, immature, pass to mature,
and decay. In the refinery industries, this oil is rejected because it can be
generate a low quality of cooking oil. Generally, this oil has been used to
produce a biodiesel or fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) over a catalysts. In this
research, this oil is converted to a crude biodiesel over Zinc oxide (ZnO) as a
heterogeneous catalyst. This catalyst was prepared from zinc carbonate
precipitant by a hydrothermal method. The ZnO catalyst can be made easily
and the raw materials is cheap. The goal of this research is to increase CPO
off-grade added value and determine the catalytic activity of the ZnO catalyst.
The activity catalytic of ZnO is evaluated by regenerating the spent catalyst
and it is reused several times in the transesterification reaction cycles.
Results, yield of crude biodiesel is obtained maximally 96%. The catalytic
activity of ZnO catalyst is high, and it cam be re-used determined by
regenerating the spent catalyst, then it was regenerated and r-used four
times in the transesterification reaction cycles. The catalytic activity of ZnO
catalyst till retain in the 4th. reaction cycle giving the yield of crude biodiesel in
the range of 96 – 71%. Overall, conversion CPO off-grade to crude biodiesel
over ZnO catalyst was significant high. This ZnO catalyst is potential as a
catalyst in the biodisel production
