The characteristics of peanut and rapeseed including high oil content, favorable fatty acid composition, low agricultural inputs, definable growing season, and uniform seed maturation rates makes them a good source for biodiesel production. Thus, the transesterification process to produce biodiesel from peanut oil and rapeseed oil was studied. This process gives yields of (95 % and 88 %) from peanut oil and (97 %, 92 %) from rapeseed oil using potassium hydroxide (KOH) and sodium hydroxide (NaOH) as a catalyst, respectively. Biodiesel yields were analyzed using the FTIR (Fourier Transform Mid-IR) spectroscopy method. Biodiesel yields from peanut oil and rapeseed oil at different conditions were investigated in order to optimize the process. Response surface methodology (RSM) was used to optimize the process parameters of the transesterification reaction. The models showed a good agreement with the experimental results, demonstrating that this methodology was useful for optimization. The models were successful in explaining the variation of response with respect to the three process parameters studied. The fuel properties of biodiesel produced were compared with ASTM standards for biodiesel.
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Sinha et al. (2012) studied this question.