Masduki
29 Desember 2011
Master Student, Chemical Engineering, UGM
Research title:
Biodiesel production from palm oil utilizing surfactant
Outline:
Biodiesel is a renewable alternative energy processed from vegetable oil or animal fat. In Indonesia biodiesel is an alternative energy which has high potential to be developed, consider that Indonesia has abundant of natural resource. One of the natural resource which considerably be a good resource as biodiesel raw material is palm oil.
A biodiesel production process needs methanol and catalyst to react the triglyceride in the palm oil to be alkyl ester trough trans-ester-ification. Methanol used as reactant considered need to be reduced consider that methanol is also a renewable alternative energy resource. Therefore it is needed an innovation to reduce the methanol used as reactant. The purpose of utilizing surfactant is that the usage of methanol as reactant can be reduced by reducing interfacial tension between triglyceride and methanol. By adding surfactant it is also hoped that the catalyst performance can be boosted so that the usage of catalyst can be reduced and the conversion can be improved within considerably shorter reaction time.