Ade Kurniawan

27 Desember 2011

Master Student,

Chemical Engineering Department, Gadjah Mada University

Research title:

Eco-efficient Biodiesel Purification via Waste-based Adsorbent

Research outline:

Biodiesel is the excellent alternative fuel for petroleum diesel substitution. This alternative that has environmental friendly characteristic including non-toxic, biodegradable, and the absence of sulphur, has become one of the world’s research concern to continue exploring and optimizing the processes to achieve the eco-efficient and eco-friendly mass production of biodiesel.

The main chemical process to produce biodiesel is the transesterification of trigliseride with methanol and KOH as catalyst where it forms methyl ester (biodiesel) and glycerin. After glycerin removals, biodiesel still shows the impurities including excess methanol, KOH catalyst, and glycerin.Further purification is needed to meet the published standard.

Some developed purification methods are wet and dry washings. The wet washing which is commonly used has some weakness in the need of high water demand and long process time, and even the water cannot be reused. So does the dry washing via adsorbent that become preferable biodiesel purification methods still has economical issue since its cost is expensive.

This study focus on the exploration and optimization of the more eco-efficient waste-based adsorbent production and the optimization of continuous biodiesel purification.