Process Optimization and Characterization of Methyl Ricinoleate by Orthogonal Design of Experiments

Methyl ricinoleate (MR) is an important bio-based chemical raw material. This study has changed the traditional pickling process and prepared MR by transesterification using castor oil and anhydrous methanol, with potassium hydroxide as catalyst. Orthogonal design of experiments were conducted to measure the multiple effects of reaction temperature, time, methanol/oil molar ratio, and catalyst dosage based on product yield and 40 ℃ kinematic viscosity, and the optimal reaction conditions were determined. After the structure of the products was characterized by FTIR, GC-MS, and NMR, it indicated that under the optimized conditions, the product yield was 96.7% and MR content was 84.1%.