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)
