Production of Bio-Diesel from Palm Kernel Oil and Groundnut Oil

The need for renewable and environmentally friendlier energy sources has led to intensified efforts with respect to research in that area. One of such endeavours is the production of biofuels from various sources of vegetable oils. Therefore, this work is aimed at producing biodiesel from freshly prepared and clean palm kernel oil and groundnut oil making use of methanol and sodium hydroxide pellets in a base-catalysed trans-esterification reaction. 185g groundnut oil and 187g palm kernel was trans-esterified with 37g of methanol and 0.7g of NaOH pellets at 55°C operating temperature. The result gave a percentage conversion of 91.98% for groundnut oil feedstock and 16.18g of glycerol (i.e. soap) as bye product, while palm kernel oil feedstock gave a yield of 90.53% conversion and 15.20g of glycerol. The biodiesel retained the physical properties of the oil such as smell and colour. The density of the biodiesel from groundnut oil was found to be 850.80kg/m3 while that of palm kernel oil gave 848.0kg/m3. The kinematic and dynamic viscosities of groundnut oil bio-diesel were obtained to be 15.9mm2/s and 13.5 x 10-3kgm-1s-1 while that of palm kernel gave 7.65mm2/s and 6.49 x 10-3kgm-1s-1 respectively.