LAUSR

Abstract The aim of present study is to investigate the effect of different solvent on lipids extraction efficiency and biodiesel production under optimized process parameters from tannery sludge. Results have revealed that standard chloroform-methanol method has a higher lipid yield of 22.8% (w/v), corresponding to 98.5% (w/v) of lipid extraction efficiency at optimal conditions. The optimized conditions for in-situ transesterification procedure were: catalyst concentration of 3% (v/v), sludge solid to methanol ratio of 1: 25 (w/v), reaction temperature of 60 °C, and time of 12 h, achieving 89.7% yield of biodiesel. Further, the FAME profile of biodiesel analyzed by FT-IR, 1H and 13C NMR, and GC–MS showed the purity of higher than 97.12%. The physicochemical properties of 5% blended biodiesel were found to be within the ASTM standards. This work concluded the production of biodiesel from sludge could be techno-economically viable due to extremely high lipids yield and low-cost of this feedstock.