TITLE:
Biodiesel Production from Oils Extracted from Date Pits
AUTHORS:
Sulaiman Al-Zuhair, Hanifa Taher, Salama Al Dhaheri, Shereen Wajeeh, Mutasim Nour, Emad El-Najjar
KEYWORDS:
Date Pits, Soxhlet, Lipase, Biodiesel, Enzymatic Reaction
JOURNAL NAME:
Green and Sustainable Chemistry,
Vol.7 No.1,
February
24,
2017
ABSTRACT: Biodiesel production had received a considerable
attention as a green, non-toxic and renewable alternative to petroleum diesel.
To avoid using vegetable oils, which are expensive and compete with food, as
feedstock, waste oils have been proposed. However, these waste materials
contain a large amount of free fatty acids that complicates the production
process. In this work, biodiesel production using an alternative feedstock;
namely oils from date-pits, has been investigated. These oils have the same
favorable features of straight oils, and at the same time are considered waste,
since they are extracted from a waste material. The yield of oils extracted
using n-hexane in a Soxhlet apparatus was compared to that of oils
extracted using methanol-chloroform solvent mixture. The extracted oils were then converted
to biodiesel via transesterification with methanol in
presence of Novozym𪥣 or Eversa®Transform. The highest oils extraction yield of 11.7%, per dry weight
sample, was obtained using Soxhlet extraction apparatus compared to 8.9% using methanol-chloroform
mixture. The highest biodiesel production yield was 30% of the oil used,
achieved after 6 hours using Novozym𪥣 at 40°C, 5:1 methanol to oil molar ratio and 10wt%
enzyme loading. By using a chemical alkaline catalyst, NaOH, at the same
conditions, the yield was 27%.