PRODUCTION OF BIODIESEL USING PALM KERNEL OIL
Abstract
The need for renewable and environmentally friendlier energy sources has led to intensified efforts with respect to research in that area. One of such endeavours is the production of biofuels from various sources of vegetable oils. Therefore this work is aimed at producing biodiesel from freshly prepared and clean palm kernel oil making use of methanol. The percentage yields of biodiesel obtained from palm kernel oil catalysed from potassium hydroxide is 89%. The phsio-chemical properties of biodiesel showed the specific gravity, kg/l to be 0.8888, kinematic viscosity, cst to be 23.04, base sediment and water %, 0, flash point, 136, pour point, 9, total acid number ,mg KOH/g, 0.64, distillation, 204.365.
Palm kernel oil is an economical choice for the production of biodiesel because of its availability and cost. However, the widespread production of biodiesel has been limited by its inability to economically compete with subsidized petroleum diesel.
From the laboratory scale production and characterization of the methyl ester of PKO (biodiesel) studied, it may be concluded that the PKO biodiesel produced in the laboratory gave premising results as alternative diesel fuel with fuel properties in good agreement with the biodiesel specification standard.
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