Application of Response Surface Methodology for Optimization of Biodiesel Production by Transesterification of Animal Fat with Methanol

In this paper, the transesterification of waste animal fat with methanol is studied. The transesterification reaction is affected by parameters like catalyst concentration, reaction time, and reaction temperature and methanol quantity. In this work, optimization techniques such as central composite design and response surface methods have used to find best combination of transesterification parameters to obtain maximum biodiesel yield. The combined effect of catalyst concentration, reaction time and methanol quantity on biodiesel yield were investigated and optimized by using response surface method. XLSTAT software has used to generate a second order model to predict biodiesel yield as a function of catalyst concentration, reaction time and methanol quantity by keeping reaction temperature (55 0 C to 60 0 C) for all experiments. 3D surface plots have been developed to predict maximum biodiesel yield. A statistical model predicted the maximum waste animal fat methyl ester yield of 85.93% volume of oil at optimized parameters of methanol quantity (35% volume of oil), base catalyst concentration (0.46% weight of oil) and reaction time (90 minutes). Experimentally, maximum yield of 91% was obtained at above parameters. A variation of 5.56% was observed between predicted maximum and experimental maximum yield. This is there within the acceptable variation between theoretical and experimental value.