Improving biodiesel quality and productivity from Egyptian castor by studying optimization factors

A main reason for Air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions is petroleum-based fuel, burning those types of fuels produces carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide which harms both environment & human's health, in addition to the great drop in petroleum sources' quantities recently and the continuous increase in its price leading to products raise in price, all that opened the door for new generation of fuel derived from natural origins such as biofuels. Biodiesel has shown a great performance in combustion engines as a clean alternative to petroleum-based diesel. Biodiesel can be derived from plant-based oil, or animal fat-based oil. Castor seed which is considered as a waste in Egypt and as an oil rich source is considered as a valuable source for bio diesel in Egypt. This study motivated enhancing the efficiency of biodiesel generation from castor oil by employing the Response Surface Methodology. Three variables were studied : temperature, reaction time, and methanol concentration. The optimization aims to identify the optimal conditions to maximize biodiesel production with effective conversion efficiency. The optimization revealed that maintaining a temperature of 40 oC for 60 minutes, with a 1% KOH catalyst and 20% methanol by weight, resulted in the highest yield of biodiesel at 90.859% and a conversion efficiency of 82.04%. Quality assessment through thin-layer chromatography and physical property analysis of the refined methyl ester demonstrated compliance with or superiority over ASTM biodiesel standards.