OPTIMIZATION OF BIODIESEL PRODUCED FROM CHICKEN FATS USING RESPONSE SURFACE METHODOLOGY

Heterogeneous transesterification of chicken fat oil (CFO) to biodiesel over Zn/MgO catalyst and the optimization of the process have been investigated, response surface methodology (RSM) was employed to study the relationships of methanol to oil ratio, catalyst loading, and reaction time on methyl ester yield. The experiments were designed using Central Composite by applying 24 full factorial designs with two central points. Transesterification of CFO produced 92% maximum methyl ester yield at the optimum methanol to oil ratio = 12:1, catalyst loading = 4% w/w and reaction time = 90mins. The chicken fat methyl ester (CFME) properties like specific gravity, kinematic viscosity, flash point, fire point, cloud point, cetane number, sulphur content, and diesel index were determined and found to be 0.8528kg/l, 5.139cSt, 267k, 265k, 428k, 42 , 0.032%wt, and 45. However, interaction between methanol oil ratio and catalyst gave the largest effect on the chicken fat oil methy ester yield. The result indicated that RSM can be used to find the relationships among process variable response in efficient manner using minimum number of experiment.