Biodiesel Development from Sesame Oil: Transesterification and Fuel Characterization

The environmental awareness and exhaustion of resources are driving forces behind the development of alternative fuels from renewable raw material resources that are certainly more acceptable. Vegetable oil is the main probable alternative fuel. The most dangerous properties of vegetable oils are its low volatility and high viscosity, because of these reason there are numerous problems during their long period usage in CI engines. The most frequently used technique to make vegetable oil fit for use in CI engines is to convert it into biodiesel, i.e. vegetable oil esters using method of transesterification. Sesame oil is a non-edible vegetable oil, which is existing in huge quantities in different states of India, and very little research has been done to use this oil as the replacement for the Diesel. In the present research work has been investigated the transesterification process for biodiesel production of Sesame oil. Optimum conditions for transesterification of Sesame oil with methanol and KOH as catalyst were found to be 60 °C reaction temperature, 1 h reaction time, 1:4 molar ratio of sesame oil to methanol and 0.40% catalyst (w/w). Sesame oil methyl ester thus produced was characterized to find its suitability to be used as a fuel in CI engines. Results indicated that biodiesel obtained under the optimum conditions has comparable properties to substitute the Diesel; hence, Sesame oil methyl ester biodiesel could be recommended as a mineral Diesel fuel substitute for compression ignition (CI) engines in agriculture sector as well as in the transportation.