Successive Optimisation of Waste Cooking Oil Transesterification in a Continuous Microwave Assisted Reactor

This paper presents an optimization study of waste cooking oil (WCO) transesterification in a continuous microwave assisted reactor (CMAR). The custom-built CMAR employed an integrated proportional-integral-derivative controller for accurate control of temperature and reactant flowrate. The fatty ac...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: M. A., Mohd Ali, R. M., Yunus, Cheng, C. K., Jolius, Gimbun
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Royal Society of Chemistry 2015
Subjects:
Online Access:http://umpir.ump.edu.my/id/eprint/11252/
http://umpir.ump.edu.my/id/eprint/11252/
http://umpir.ump.edu.my/id/eprint/11252/
http://umpir.ump.edu.my/id/eprint/11252/1/Successive%20Optimisation%20of%20Waste%20Cooking%20Oil%20Transesterification%20In%20A%20Continuous%20Microwave%20Assisted%20Reactor.pdf
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Summary:This paper presents an optimization study of waste cooking oil (WCO) transesterification in a continuous microwave assisted reactor (CMAR). The custom-built CMAR employed an integrated proportional-integral-derivative controller for accurate control of temperature and reactant flowrate. The fatty acid methyl ester contents in the sample were determined using gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The results from two-level factorial design showed that the methanol to oil molar ratio, amount of NaOCH3 catalyst and reaction time influenced markedly the biodiesel conversion, with the significance of 45.99%, 6.76% and 3.21%, respectively. Further analysis using a successive optimization method generated by the Box–Behnken design predicted an optimum biodiesel conversion of circa 97.13% at 0.68 wt% of catalyst loading, 11.62 : 1 of methanol to oil molar ratio and 4.47 min of reaction time. Experimental validation of the optimum conditions showed an excellent agreement, with a minimum deviation of 0.18% from three replicates. The biodiesel produced in this work also met the specification of ASTM D6751.