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ABSTRACT
In the current work, the ultrasonic horn induced cavitation was used as an intensification approach for the production of fatty acid methyl esters (FAME), i.e. biodiesel and triacetin as a by-product from the reaction of mahua oil selected as sustainable feedstock and methyl acetate (MA). The effects of process variables like reaction temperature, mahua oil to methyl acetate molar ratio, reaction time, catalyst loading, duty cycle, and power on yield of FAME have been studied and the results elucidated best conditions for maximum fatty acid methyl ester yield of 96% as time of 50 min, temperature of 50C, molar ratio of 1:8, duty cycle of 40%, ultrasonic power of 70 W and catalyst loading of 1 wt%. For conventional approach based on only stirring, the yield was 61% under otherwise similar conditions. Kinetic study was performed to estimate the order of reaction and the activation energy. It was shown that the kinetics was well fitted to first-order reaction and activation energy was observed as 25.9 kJ/mol. The study revealed the effective application of ultrasonic horn in intensification of biodiesel production using interesterification reaction resulting in considerably higher yield of FAME.
List of abbreviations
| FAME | = | Fatty acid methyl esters |
| MA | = | Methyl acetate |
| min | = | minute |
| h | = | hour |
| ASTM | = | American Society of Testing Material |
| HPLC | = | High performance liquid chromatography |
| LR | = | Laboratory reagent |
| GCMS | = | Gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrophotometer |
| W | = | Watt |
| MO | = | Mahua oil |
| MADG | = | Mono-acetin diglyceride, |
| DAMG | = | Di-acetin monoglyceride |
| TA | = | Triacetin |
List of symbols
| r | = | rate of reaction |
| k | = | rate constant |
| x | = | conversion |
| CAO | = | initial concentration of reactant |
| CA | = | concentration of reactant at time t |
| Ea | = | activation energy |
Acknowledgment
One of the authors SG would like to acknowledge the support of the UGC Networking Resource Centre in Chemical Engineering for enabling the Ph.D. degree work
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.