Alita Lelyana

27 Desember 2011

 Undergraduate Student Chemical Engineering Department, Gadjah Mada University 

Research title

Kinetic Study on Esterification of Palm Fatty Acid Distillate (PFAD) using  H₂SO₄ as Catalyst 

Outline

PFAD (Palm fatty acid distillate) is a byproduct of cooking oil plant in based of palm oil. In the process, there will be by-products of about 40%, in the form of free fatty acid and palm oil fraction which has a low freezing point. These byproducts are undesirable in high-quality cooking oil.

The byproduct which contains about 70-80% of free fatty acids can be further processed into alkyl esters by esterification. Alkyl ester is a biodiesel product that has a high sales value, in fact of biodiesel plant is highly developed nowadays, according to the demand of environmentally friendly fuels is increasing.

This research is focused on finding the value of the esterification’s kinetics of PFAD with methanol with a catalyst H₂SO₄ into methyl esters with the effect of temperature changes, reactants ratio, and catalyst ratio.