Study On The Preparation Of Biodiesel From Jatropha Curcas L. Oil

As fossil fuel reserves rapidly decline, renewable alternative fuels are more and more attractive. Biodiesel is renewable, biodegradable and environmentally benign. The use of biodiesel is growing quickly because of its excellent fuel properties. Biodiesel chemically consists of mono-alkyl esters of long chain fatty acid, which is often manufactured by trans-esterification of vegetable oils or animal fats with methanol.However, the price of the bio-diesel inhibits its popularity. Using cheaper feedstock is a major way to reduce the cost of the biodiesel.In this work, a kind of cheap, abundant raw material, Jatropha curcas L. oil was used to produce biodiesel through a pre-esterification, trans-esterification two-step reaction process. In the pre-esterification reaction, the free fatty acids in the feedstock were reacted with methanol to form esters, hereby resulted in reduction of the acid value (A?V). In the followed trans-esterification reaction, the processed Jatropha curcas L. oil with the lower acid value reacted further with methanol to produce biodiesel.Inter-solubility of the reaction components is essential data for the production design and process operation. The inter-solubility of FAME-methanol-glycerol, oil-FAME-methanol, oil-glycerol-methanol, and oil-FAME-glycerol in the range from 298.15K to 333.15K has been measured. Methanol is completely soluble in both FAME and glycerol, but insoluble in oil. With increasing the mass fraction of FAME,...