Production of biodiesel from cassia javanica and catharanthus roseus seed oilusing heterogeneous catalyst

Abstract

Energy supply is going to be depleted in overall well developed economic countries in the world. These days most of the countries in the world are importers of energy. The most important reasons that contribute to the energy sources are the manufacturing cost of crude petroleum products, growth in the industrial sector and improvingquality of living standard. In the current scenario, biodiesels is an able alternative fuel that is environment-friendly, renewable, non-toxic and a biodegradable matter which can be obtained from bio-oils mainly extracted from plants and their product. It contains mono-alkyl esters of lipid content and is gathered from varied sources like animal fats, vegetable oils, used cooking oils, edible oils, nonedible oils, and algae. During this work was undertaken to conclude and examine new potential non-edible oil seeds and cheaper feedstocks for the production of biodiesel. An effort has been taken to synthesize biodiesel from two different non-edible seeds like Cassia javanica and Catharanthus roseus. Preliminary, bio-oil extraction was carried out from both the seeds with different types of solvents using Soxhlet equipment. During the extraction studies, a better yield of bio-oil with 24.40 % was obtained from a polar solvent hexane at 68 °C within a time of 3.5 hours. The bio-oil extraction kinetics follows first-order kinetic mechanism. Activation energy and thermodynamic properties were determined. newlineVi Fuel parameters such as flash point, cloud and pour point and carbon residue were studied. Physiochemical properties and all other fuel parameters were investigated by AOCS and ASTM standard techniques. The low acid value of 0.32 mg KOH g-1 for the extraction bio-oil allowed alkali transesterification process to make biodiesel through a heterogeneous catalyst. newline newline