RESEARCH ARTICLE

Journal of Oil Palm Research Vol. 34 (3) September 2022, p. 524-534

OPTIMISATION OF REACTION PARAMETERS FOR THE SYNTHESIS OF SOLKETAL LEVULINATE AS POTENTIAL BIODIESEL ADDITIVE

NMD NIK SITI MARIAM1 *; SENG SOI HOONG1 ; MOHD ZAN ARNIZA1 ; SRIHANUM ADNAN1 ; TUAN NOOR MAZNEE TUAN ISMAIL1 ; SHOOT KIAN YEONG1 and MUHAMMAD RAHIMI YUSOP2

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21894/jopr.2021.0052
Received: 26 April 2021   Accepted: 10 October 2021   Published Online: 21 December 2021
ABSTRACT

Glycerol is a major by-product of biodiesel production and finding new uses for glycerol is crucial to ensure the sustainability and continuance of the biodiesel industry. Thus, the transformation of glycerol into ketal compounds that have potential as additive to improve biodiesel properties, could be an option to provide an outlet for increasing glycerol stock. This study aims to optimise the transesterification reaction to afford solketal levulinate ester (SoLE) in highest yield by reacting solketal with methyl levulinate (ML). The reaction parameters varied are type of base catalyst, catalyst concentration, reaction temperature, reaction time and reactants molar ratio. Under optimised reaction conditions: 1.5% sodium carbonate (Na<sub>2</sub> CO<sub>3</sub> ) catalyst loading, reaction temperature of 140°C, reaction time of 4 hr and molar ratio of 3:1 (solketal:ML), as high as 74.5% yield and 95% purity of SoLE was obtained.

KEYWORDS:


1 Malaysian Palm Oil Board,
6 Persiaran Institusi, Bandar Baru Bangi,
43000 Kajang, Selangor, Malaysia.

2 School of Chemical Sciences and Food Technology,
Faculty of Science and Technology,
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia,
43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia.

* Corresponding author e-mail: nsmariam@mpob.gov.my