Browsing by Author "Andrew, Anamagreth"

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Kinetics of vegetable oil transesterificationcatalyzed by magnesium oxide supported on cashew nut shell liquid-templatedmesoporoussilica
    (University of Dar es Salaam, 2012) Andrew, Anamagreth
    In this work, transesterification of jatropha oil using magnesium oxide supported on cashew nut shell liquid (CNSL) mesoporoustemplated silica (MTS) and its kinetics were investigated. The support, MTS (CNSL) was impregnated at three different ratios (1:1, 1:2, and 1:3) with MgO catalyst using Mg(NO3)2.6H2O as a precursor salt. The supported catalysts were prepared by wet impregnation. The catalysts were characterized with nitrogen adsorption/desorption studies, Scanning Electron Microscopy-Energy Dispersive X-Ray (SEM-EDX), X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and Fourier Transform Infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy. The developed catalysts were evaluated in the transesterification reaction of jatropha oil in a batch reactor. A central composite rotatable design was used to optimize the effect of reaction temperature, reaction time and catalyst concentration. All variables were found to significantly affect the methyl ester yield where the most effective factors were found to be the catalyst concentration and reaction temperature followed by reaction time. The maximum conversions of 98.7% and 91.5% were found with 3MgO/MTS (CNSL) and 2MgO/MTS (CNSL) respectively, followed by the 1MgO/MTS (CNSL) catalyst with 81.6%. Rate constants for the three developed catalysts were 0.02831, 0.02886, 0.02896 min-1 for 1MgO/MTS (CNSL), 2MgO/MTS (CNSL), 3MgO/MTS (CNSL), respectively. It was concluded from the results that, 3MgO/MTS (CNSL) was an effective catalyst for jatropha transesterification reaction. The developed catalysts were found not to leach in the methanol, could be recovered, reused and still gave reasonable methyl ester yields.