Experimental investigation and performance evaluation of biodiesel production from non-edible mixed oil

Mixed non edible oil (equal volume) such as processed dairy waste (PDW), Mahua oil (MO) and castor oil (CO) were utilized for the biodiesel (vegetable fuel) production. The chemical composition of this raw oil was examined by GC-MS analysis. The acid value of raw oil was received to be 4.11 mg of KOH/g oil hence, not recommended for direct transesterification reaction. Two step transesterification was proposed in this investigation namely esterification followed by transesterification. Three level esterification reaction was proposed to optimize the acid value of esterified oil. The acid catalyst concentration of 3 (v/v)% was produced esterified oil with least acid value of 0.41. This optimized catalyst concentration was utilized to produce 6L of esterified oil to conduct transesterification experiment. Four level, two parameter design of experiment was proposed to optimize the transesterification reaction variables such as reaction temperature and base catalyst loading for the maximum biodiesel yield. Totally, 12 transesterification experiments were performed to identify the optimum process variables. This study was produced maximum biodiesel of 96 vol % for the reaction temperature 55°C, catalyst utilization 1 wt%, reaction time 60 minutes and stirring speed 600 rpm.