Potential of Ripe Plantain Fruit Peels as an Ecofriendly Catalyst for Biodiesel Synthesis
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Date
2018-02-05
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
MDPI
Abstract
The present work was aimed at assessing the possible use of ripe plantain fruit peel as
a green-base catalyst in synthesizing Azadirachta indica oil methyl esters (AIOME). The free fatty
acid content of the oil (5.81 wt %) was initially reduced to 0.90 wt % using methanol: oil at 2.19 v/v,
Fe2(SO4)3 at 6 wt %, time of 15 min and temperature of 65 C. The pretreated oil was converted to
AIOME in a transesterification process with calcined ripe plantain peel ash (CRPPA) at 700 C as
catalyst. The process was modeled by artificial neural network and optimized using genetic algorithm.
The effectiveness of the developed CRPPA is ascribable to its high K content and microstructural
transformation. The reliability of the model obtained was confirmed with a high coefficient of
determination (R2) of 0.996 and a low mean relative percentage deviation (MRPD) of 8.10%. The best
operating variables combination for the process was methanol:oil of 0.73 v/v, CRPPA of 0.65 wt %
and time of 57 min while the temperature was kept constant at 65 C with a corresponding AIOME
yield of 99.2 wt %. The results of this work demonstrated the potentials of ripe plantain peels and
neem oil as cheap feedstocks for biodiesel production
Description
International journal of MDPI, p.1-15
Keywords
biodiesel, artificial neural network, heterogeneous catalyst, modeling, optimization, transesterification