Influence of activation temperature of constructive lime as heterogeneous catalyst in biodiesel production from canola oil

In recent years, increasing energy demand and decreasing fossil fuel sources, encourage researchers to investigate on new energy supply, especially renewable energy. Biodiesel, as an alternative for traditional diesel fuel has attracted attention of many nations. It can be produced easily, via methanolysis of vegetable oil in presence of appropriate catalyst. In present study, to evaluate constructive lime as catalyst and determine the appropriate pretreatment temperature, transesterification of canola oil in different pretreatment temperature and uniform operating condition were done. Operational conditions were as follows: atmospheric pressure; weight of catalyst: 1% based on initial oil weight; methanol/oil molar ratio: 12; reaction temperature, 65ºC; under vigorous mixing and reaction time was 5 hr. At these conditions, when activation temperature was 600°C, 91.16% conversion was obtained. For this product, dynamic viscosity and specific gravity of produced biodiesel were 4.4 cP and 0.882, respectively. Increasing in activation temperature did not change the conversion, much. When pretreatment temperature was lesser than 600°C, the results were not acceptable.