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Winterization of Jatropha biodiesel

N.Vedaraman, Sudharsan Srinivasan, P.C.Seshasai, K.C.Velappan

The Fuel from vegetable oil, which can be considered as a good alternate for diesel is made by a common process called tranesterification. It is the process used for the production of Biodiesel which consists of fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) from the triglycerides. In base catalyzed tranesterification process the raw oil should be of good quality and the oil should not have free fatty acid (FFA) and moisture content more than 0.5%. In many cases, large quantity of oils contains higher moisture content and FFA and to transesterify these oils acid catalyzed tranesterification process is preferred which is not sensitive to higher FFA and moisture. One problem with biodiesel is poor low temperature stability. During winter the Northern, Western and Eastern part of India experience temperature from 15oC to 2oC whereas in Southern part the temperature is relatively high with aminimumtemperature of 20oC.Due to the low temperature the saturated fatty acid alkyl esters in the biodiesel bound to crystallize and cause problems in Compression Ignition engine (Diesel engine)when 100%biodiesel is used as fuel. Jatropha is renewable non-edible oil and not expensive compared to other oils like Coconut, Sunflower, Palm, Neem, Rice bran. The aim is to produce vegetable oil based fuel (Biodiesel) using high FFA Jatropha oil by acid catalyzed tranesterification process using methanol with sulfuric acid as catalyst. The reaction is carried out at 65o C – 70° C for 14 hours. The biodiesel obtained is washed with hot distilled water and dried in oven at 105o C. Winterization of biodiesel is then carried out at different temperature from 35o C – 0o C for a period of 12 hours and solid fractions are filtered and weighed to find its usability at different cold temperatures.