Journal of Emerging Trends in Engineering and Applied Sciences: Research Areas

Abstract:
Ground nut oil is widely grown in northern Nigeria and is a potential source of feed stock for biodiesel production. However, not much work has been done on the conversion to biodiesel and its characterization. The purpose of this study is to cover the gap in knowledge by extracting the oil, transesterifying it to biodiesel and characterizing it. To achieve this, the ground nut oil which contains high amount of free fatty acid was pretreated with hydrochloric acid as catalyst and anhydrous methanol at a molar ratio of 9:1 to reduce its free fatty acid to 1.5% before tranesterification with sodium hydroxide as catalyst at a molar ratio 6:1. The oil and biodiesel were characterized and it gave for example, a kinematic velocity 6.6 mm2/s, flash point of 182oC and cetane number 51 which are close to the properties of diesel fuel thus making it an alternate fuel for diesel engines. Gas chromatography analysis shows that it is 68.7% unsaturated and contains mainly the oleics.

Keywords: biodiesel, ground nut oil, oleics, pretreatment, transesterification.

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