Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-1-339-16124-2
M.S.
Applied Chemistry
The Petroleum Institute (United Arab Emirates)
2015
This study has two main purposes. The first one is to explore various catalysts for transesterification process in neem biodiesel production. Two types of neem oil, with different water content, were used as the feedstock. Attention was mainly focused on the organic base TBAH and modified conventional homogenous catalysts (KOH, NaOH) with crown ethers, which are considered as "cage-like" structures for entrapment of trace elements within the cage diameter. Trace element content of biodiesel samples was analyzed by ICP-MS; and the toxic species: As3+, As5+ and Cr3+, Cr6+ were characterized by HPLC-ICP-MS. Physical properties of the biodiesel samples were tested and experimental results were compared with those derived from the unmodified treatment. The accumulated data revealed that product yields and metal retention were strongly influenced by catalytic modification. The best result was produced by the combined KOH/18-crown-6 treatment in the less water contaminated feedstock. The yield of the by-product, glycerol, was determined by FT-IR and the glycerol was also characterized for trace elements and toxic species using hyphenated mass spectrometry.