Reactive Extraction of Free Fatty Acids from Jatropha Oil as a Pre-processing Step in Biodiesel Preparation: Experimental Evaluation and Parametric Optimization.

Crude vegetable oils contain considerable amounts of free fatty acids, and they ought to be minimized for use in food and non-food applications. Conventional deacidification adopts alkali neutralization for the removal of free fatty acids. Here, a novel method for the removal of free fatty acids from jatropha oil by reactive extraction using monoethanolamine in methanol is proposed. Extraction studies with initial free fatty acids concentration (0.1–0.5 kmol/m3) using monoethanolamine (0.4141–1.6568 kmol/m3) in methanol at 303–333 K were performed and investigated. Extraction parameters like distribution coefficient and equilibrium complexation constant loading ratio for free fatty acids extraction were obtained. Central composite design identified monoethanolamine composition and temperature as significant. The findings of this study revealed that reactive extraction of free fatty acids using monoethanolamine in methanol was highly successful in reduction of the free fatty acids in jatropha oil. The optimum extraction was attained at monoethanolamine concentration of 2.05011 kmol/m3 at 293.5 K. A quadratic response surface model exhibited good agreement with the experimental results. Further biodiesel was prepared using the deacidified oil, and the specifications obtained were well within the standard ASTM limits. Reactive extraction of free fatty acids is investigated in this work for the first time. The method demonstrated in this study can be of considerable interest to the biodiesel industry with regard to pre-treatment methodologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]