The Production of Biofuels from Coconut Oil Using Microwave

Abstract

Biofuels including biodiesel, an alternative fuel, is renewable, environmentally friendly, non-toxic and lowemission energy. The raw material used in this work was coconut oil, which contained saturated fatty acids about90% with medium chain (C8-C12), especially lauric acid and myristic acid. Reaction was conducted in batchreactor assisted by microwave. The purpose of this research was to study the effect of power and NaOH catalystin transesterification enhanced by microwave and to obtain a biofuels (biodiesel and biokerosene) derived fromcoconut oil. The reaction was performed by mixing oil and methanol with mole ratio of 1:6, catalystconcentration of 1% w/w with setting electrical power at 100, 264, 400, 600 and 800 W. The reaction time wasconditioned at of 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10 and 15 min. The results showed that microwave could accelerate thetransesterification process to produce biodiesel using NaOH catalyst. The highest yield of biodiesel was 97.76 %,or 99.05 % conversion at 5 min reaction, meanwhile biokerosene was 48% after distillation.