Title : Pongamia pinnata: Harnessing plant-based lipids for renewable energy
Abstract:
Biodiesel has been recognized as good compatible and possible alternative of non-renewable petro diesels because of its similar characteristics to petroleum diesel. Although, mostly homogeneous catalysts are used for trans-esterification for maximum oil to diesel conversion but recently heterogeneous catalysts are of more interest because of their reusability and no production of waste water. However, nowadays composite catalysts are novel trends in heterogeneous catalysis. Present experimental investigation was planned to produce biodiesel having better fuel quality parameters meeting the international biodiesel standards. Seeds of Pongamia pinnata were collected from different areas and following steps were followed to get fractions: drying of feedstock, grinding of raw material, screw pressing of seeds for extraction of fatty oil, vacuum filtration, refining of oil by activated charcoal, dehydration with anhydrous sodium sulfate, vacuum fractionation. Alumina supported composite catalyst was used to form biodiesel. As alumina is the best support for loading of the catalyst due to its suitable pore size distribution, greater surface area and high thermal stability. When a catalyst is incorporated into/onto alumina, textural and structural properties of the catalyst are affected. The catalyst that is used in this research is alumina supported composite catalyst CaO/KI/Al2O3 that was prepared by precipitation and impregnation method. Two reaction parameters are varied for the optimization of the biodiesel yield i.e catalyst concentration and methanol amount. It was observed that pure oil and residue gave maximum yield of 89.76% and 91.92% respectively with 15grams of methanol and 0.18 gram of catalyst amount. While fraction gave maximum biodiesel yield 94% with 9 gram of methanol amount and 0.18 gram of catalyst amount. Various fuel quality parameters including pH, density, specific gravity, iodine value, cetane number, saponification value, acid value, cloud point and pour point was checked by different techniques. GC-MS analysis of the sample was also analyzed to their composition.
