Biodiesel production from Crude Jatropha Oil (CJO) in pilot plant

In this work, a two step-transesterification process was adopted to produce biodiesel from different samples of jatropha oil with different acid numbers (8.99 and 15.99 mgKOH/g). The first sample was subjected to esterification process at lab scale without preheating, and the final acid number found to be 0.36 mgKOH/g, with process parameters of 0.225 v/v sulfuric acid (H 2 SO 4) , 6:1 w/w methanol (MeOH) to oil mole ratio, reaction temperature of 65°C, and 180 min of reaction time. Using a pilot plant, the final acid number found to be 0.23 mgKOH/g for the second jatropha oil sample, with preheating and decreasing the methanol to oil mole ratio to 4.5:1 w/w. Meanwhile the other parameters remained the same from the lab scale. The final biodiesel yield obtained was 82% from the first jatropha oil sample, and 90% from the second one by using base-catalyst process parameters of 1.2 w/w potassium hydroxide (KOH), 4.5:1 w/w methanol to oil mole ratio, reaction temperature of 60°C at 120 min of reaction time. The basic physiochemical properties of the produced biodiesel from the two jatropha oil samples were both found to be within the ASTM D6751 specified limits.