Chemistry
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Babajide, Omotola; Petrik, Leslie; Musyoka, Nicholas; Amigun, Bamikole; Ameer, Farouk (Slovnaft VÚRUP, 2010)[more][less]
Abstract: South Africa is largely dependent on the combustion of coal for electricity production; Eskom’s coalfired power stations consume approximately 109 million tons of coal per annum, producing around 25 million tons of ash, to supply the bulk (93%) of South Africa’s electricity. The management of this fly ash has been a concern with various approaches for its beneficial use being investigated. This work presents the results of transesterification reaction using sunflower oil as feedstock with methanol and class F fly ash catalyst derived from a coal fly ash dump in South Africa to produce methyl esters (biodiesel). The fly ash based catalyst was prepared using the wet impregnation procedure with different loadings of potassium. This was characterized by powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), FTIR spectroscopy. The XRD patterns obtained indicated that the structure of the support gradually deformed with an increase in the loading and the extent of decomposition of KNO3 varied with the amount of loading. The influence of various reactions parameters such as loading amount of active components, methanol: oil ratio, reaction time, temperature and catalyst deactivation was investigated. The fly ash based catalyst loaded with 5% wt KNO3 at a reaction temperature of 160ºC exhibited maximum oil conversion (86.13%). The biodiesel synthesized was tested and important fuel properties of the methyl esters (Biodiesel) compared well with ASTM biodiesel standard URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/574 Files in this item: 1
BabajideBiodieselProduction2010.pdf (597.5Kb) -
Babajide, Omotola; Leslie, Petrik; Amigun, Bamikole; Ameer, Farouk (MDPI, 2009)[more][less]
Abstract: Biodiesel has attracted increasing interest and has proved to be a good substitute for fossil-based fuels due to its environmental advantages and availability from renewable resources such as refined and waste vegetable oils. Several studies have shown that biodiesel is a better fuel than the fossil-derived diesel in terms of engine performance, emissions reduction, lubricity and environmental benefits. The increasing popularity of biodiesel has generated great demand for its commercial production methods, which in turn calls for the development of technically and economically sound process technologies. This paper explores the applicability of ultrasound in the optimization of low-cost feedstock – in this case waste cooking oil – in the transesterification conversion to biodiesel. It was found that the conversion efficiency of the waste oil using ultrasound was higher than with the mechanical stirring method. The optimized variables of 6:1 methanol/oil ratio at a reaction temperature of 30 °C and a reaction time of 30 min and 0.75% KOH (wt/wt) catalyst concentration was obtained for the transesterification of the waste oil via the use of ultrasound. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/573 Files in this item: 1
BabajideBiodiesel2009.pdf (248.8Kb)