Search

Silk cotton seed kernel oil is given as a new source for methyl ester synthesis. Crude silk cotton oil was used as feedstock raw materials for methyl ester production using dimethyl carbonate as solvent and KOH catalysis. The maximum methyl esters yield produced as 97% with a kinematic viscosity (4.25 ± 0.2 5 mm2/sec) was reached at 80 °C by boiling a mixture of dimethyl carbonate (DMC) and oil mole ratio as 8:1 with 1.5 wt.% KOH catalyst (oil weight based ) for 75 min. The produced products were analyzed using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to identify the methyl esters. The properties of the methyl esters from silk cottonseed kernel oil produced met the specifications of ASTM for methyl esters. The kinetics of the KOH-catalyzed transesterification of diglyceride (DG) and triglyceride (TG) with DMC were studied at 40 to 90 °C. We found that the activation energies for transesterification of diglycerides and triglycerides were 89.8 and 83.3 kJ/mol, respectively. The results showed that all the reaction variables studied had beneficial effects.