LAUSR

Abstract The butanolysis of Jatropha oil using glycerol enriched non-calcined calcium oxide as heterogenous catalyst was carried out to investigate the influences of reaction temperature and butanol: oil molar ratio on Jatropha oil conversion (XJOB) and the yield of fatty acid butyl esters (YFABEs). The central composite design involved two factors (reaction temperature and butanol: oil molar ratio) and two levels factorial (22) was used to determine the impacts of the factors on XJOB and YFABEs and to optimize the reaction process. From the main factors and their interaction, temperature was found to highly affect both the XJOB and YFABEs. As curvatures are statistically significant (p ≤ 0.05), the second order models (quadratic models) were found to be more suitable to optimize the butanolysis process. Based on the regression models and the response surface methodology, the maximum XJOB (98.16%) and YFABEs (95.79%) were predicted to be obtained at the optimum temperatures of 87.35 and 90.48 oC and butanol: oil molar ratios of 9.13:1 and 13.24:1, respectively. The maximum YFABEs of 95.64% was also experimentally obtained at the optimum conditions predicted for the Y FABEs. From the results obtained for the experimental ranges investigated, the present study suggested that glycerol enriched non-calcined calcium oxide can be used as a good alternative catalyst for biodiesel production using butanol. More studies are also suggested for upscaling the reaction process of the current experiments by using more integrated reaction factors.