Influence of egg shell as heterogeneous catalyst on the viscosity of transesterified jatropha oil

Abstract

The use of renewable sources of energy such as biodiesel has become one of the solutions towards the problems generated as a result of the use of fossil fuels. Biodiesel can be produced through various methods such as transesterification, micro emulsion and pyrolysis. The influence of egg shell as heterogeneous catalysts on the viscosity of transesterified jatropha oil was investigated. The physical properties of the catalyst were studied using Xray diffraction (XRD) characterizations. The crude Jatropha oil was purified; transesterified and 0.1 wt%, 0.2 wt%, 0.3wt%, 0.5wt% and 0.5wt% of egg shell were used as heterogeneous catalyst during transesterification process. Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) was used to determine the functional group of the samples. Brookfield viscometer was used to measure the viscosity of crude, purified, transesterified and transesterified with 0.1 wt%, 0.2 wt%, 0.3wt%, 0.5wt% and 0.5wt% of egg shell as catalyst were measured for comparison. XRD characterizations indicate that the catalyst is Calcite with hexagonal crystal system and ????₃ as its chemical formula. The FTIR indicates the present of ester (biodiesel) on the samples. The viscosity of the samples decreases as the temperature increases but at 0.2wt% shows significant variation at equal range of temperature. This indicated that the egg shell has influence on the viscosity of transesterified jatropha oil.