Studying On A New Process Of Producing Biodiesel With Seed Oil Of Jatropha Curcas L.planted In GuiZhou China

Guizhou Province is one of the main producing areas of Jatropha curcas L. in China. The seed contains more than 30% oil that can be converted into biodiesel by transesterification. So as a kind of non-edible oils, it is one kind of the best materials to produce biodiesel. In this work, the analyses of the oil content of the seed and the components of fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) of biodiesel were studied, the ways of extracting crude oil of Jatropha curcas L. and producing biodiesel with it were optimized. Especially a new process of producing biodiesel, characterized with the transesterification catalyzed by heterogeneous catalyst, had been established. The soild catalysts code-named fcc-0508, fcc-0510, fcc-0511, which had high catalytic activities, were screened out of 40 categories of the heterogeneous catalysts. The corresponding optimization of the most important reaction conditions had been studied. The optimized conditions were 1:10 molar ratio of oil to methanol, 1 % solid catalyst, the reflux reaction temperature, the normal pressure and 5 h reaction time. Under the conditions, through the different scales of the amplified trials, the yields of biodiesel and the contents of FAME were all above 95%. In comparison between the heterogeneous catalyst and the homogeneous catalyst, the former had the obvious advantages: The yields of biodiesel were about 10% higher than the latter, the content of FAME was above 95%, the recoveries of the catalysts and the excessive methanol all reached to 90%. At present, the production costs of biodiesel per ton were about 4000 yuan. With the large scale plantation of jatrophy curcas L., the costs could be cut down to 3000 yuan per ton.