Kinetics of citrulus colocynthis oil transesterification

Citrulus colocynthis oil and methanol was transesterified in the presence of naoh as catalyst at five investigated temperatures,whereas the other reaction parameters were kept constant. this study was led to explore the kinetics of temperature and the effect of naoh concentration on the transesterification reaction,and to assess the reaction constants and activation energies of the three forward reactions. the highest biodiesel yield of 97.8% was obtained at the optimum temperature of 60 °c. the reactions of triglycerides (tg),diglycerides (dg) and monoglycerides (mg) with methanol to produce methyl ester (me) in the forward reactions appeared to be second order up to 60 min of reaction time. the kinetic constants for tg,dg and mg were found to be in the consecutive of mg>dg>tg. activation energies were 14.1 kcal/mol,10.5 kcal/mol,and 6.34 kcal/mol for the tg,dg,and mg hydrolysis reactions respectively.