parametric optimization and biodiesel production from coconut fatty acid distillate

In this study, a low-cost feedstock was chosen for biodiesel production. coconut fattyacid distillate (cd) is the by-product collected from coconut oil refineries which contain lauric fattyacid as a major saturated fatty acid. the standard titration procedure was adopted to find free fatty acid (ffa)content. the ffa was found to be 24.5% which requires esterification and transesterificationprocesses to produce biodiesel. in the first stage, ffa was reduced to 1.8% by acid (h2so4) esterificationfollowed by transesterification to produce biodiesel. the cd biodiesel (cdbd) production wasoptimized involving four parameters and three levels of l9 orthogonal array. the optimizedparameters were reaction time (40 min), reaction temperature (50 °c), catalyst concentration (0.5%),and methanol to oil ratio (8:1). the order of significance of parameters was determined using anova.the results showed that reaction time had more influence on the biodiesel production whereas methanolto oil ratio had the least influence. a linear regression model was developed to predict the yieldand was compared with the experimental values. r^2 value for the model was 95%, and the error valueis less than 15% indicating a good fit of the model. a maximum yield of 92.9% was obtained utilizingthe optimized, which was very close to the prediction. thus, a low-cost feedstock, which is otherwisemarketed as a low-value product, could be utilized in making biodiesel adding sustainability.