B. BHARATHIRAJA, A. SARAVANA RAJ, J. JAYAMUTHUNAGAI, M. JAYAKUMAR, M. ARUL KIRUBAKARAN, P. VIVEK, R. PRAVEEN KUMAR AND S. PALANI
Abstract
Biodiesel is the Fatty Acid Alkyl Ester of vegetable oils produced through transesterification reaction. Immobilized pure lipase and Rhizopus oryzae was used as the catalyst for the conversion of Waste Cooking Oil (WCO) into biodiesel using methanol as an acyl acceptor. Response surface methodology (RSM) was adopted to optimize the parameters such as temperature, time, oil to solvent ratio, enzyme concentration for lipase and pH, olive oil concentration, rpm for Rhizopus oryzae. A high conversion of 94.01% was obtained through lipase catalyzed reaction at oil to solvent ratio of 1:3, enzyme concentration of 10% at 30 oC after 24 hrs. Similarly, a high conversion of 83.76% was obtained at an optimum pH of 5.5, olive oil concentration 25g/L and 150 rpm was obtained for Rhizopus oryzae. The lipase resulted in higher yield of biodiesel when compared to the Rhizopus oryzae. Thus the influential parameters were optimized using RSM.