STUDY ON BIODIESEL PRODUCTION FROM GROUNDNUT OIL

Biodiesel is gaining more and more importance as an attractive fuel due to the depleting fossil fuel resources. Chemically biodiesel is monoalkyl esters of long chain fatty acids derived from renewable feed stock like vegetable oils and animal fats. It is produced by transesterification in which, oil or fat is reacted with a monohydric alcohol in presence of a catalyst to give the corresponding monoalkyl esters. The purpose of this study is to cover the gap in knowledge by extracting the oil, transesterifying it to biodiesel and characterizing it. To achieve this, the ground nut oil which contains high amount of free fatty acid waspretreated with hydrochloric acid as catalyst and anhydrous methanol at a molar ratio of 9:1 to reduce its free fatty acid to 1.5% before tranesterification.