AN EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF SOLAR ASSISTED BIO DIESEL PRODUCTION FROM COTTON SEED OIL

Abstract

Due to the depletion of fossil fuel energy sources, new alternative energy sources are becoming dominant in our society. Biodiesel has been recognized as an alternative for depleting petro-fuels since it is produced mainly from edible and non-edible oils, is a clean, renewable resource, and is non-toxic. Transesterification is the most commonly used process for synthesis of biodiesel. The synthesis of biodiesel involves heating a triglyceride with methanol in presence of catalyst. In this project, Biodiesel was produced by using cotton seed oil and potassium hydroxide (KOH) as catalyst. The conversion yield was maximized using Taguchi’s method of optimization. This method was adequate for calculating the effect of control parameters and it also optimizes the experiment work with limited number of experiments. After performing conventional method of biodiesel production, solar assisted transesterification was used in which thermal energy of solar irradiation was utilized for chemical heating process in biodiesel synthesis. A small parabolic solar reflector was used for utilizing solar energy. At last, Results were compared for both conventional and solar-assisted method of biodiesel production. It was concluded that the quality and conversion yield of biodiesel produced from solar-assisted method is better even when there is no requirement of mechanical stirring in this method.