Research Article
Kenneth Kennedy Adama, Sheg
Abstract
Biodiesels obtained from renewable energy sources are considered to be good alternatives to traditional fuel sources due to their environmental friendliness. Purification of the biodiesel upper-rich phase composition after transesterification is often influenced by some parameters. This study investigated the influence of temperature and time interval on the purification of biodiesel upper-rich phase mixture composition of Jatropha oil biodiesel system consisting of Jatropha oil biodiesel, methanol, glycerol at (20°C, 25°C, 30°C, 35°C, 40°C, 45°C, 50°C, 55°C, 60°C) and (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32) minutes respectively. The results were obtained by cloud point titration method under isothermal conditions at the different temperatures and time intervals and further analyzed using GC to provide the phase composition in mass fractions of the sample containing the mixture component. The analysis indicated increased mass composition of Jatropha oil biodiesel from 20°C to 60°C at intervals of 5°C attaining maximum value of 97.2% at 20°C, 97.4% at 40°C and 97.2% at 55°C for time intervals of 2 minutes in each case. This implied that temperature and time had minimal influence on the purification of the components of the Jatropha oil biodiesel upper-rich phase.