Determination of Optimum Moisture Content of Neem Seed for Biodiesel Production
[1]
Abbah E. C., Department of Agricultural and Bioresources Engineering, Federal University of Technology Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria.
[2]
Asoegwu S. N., Department of Agricultural and Bioresources Engineering, Federal University of Technology Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria.
[3]
Nwandikom G. I., Department of Agricultural and Bioresources Engineering, Federal University of Technology Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria.
This research work was on the determination of optimum moisture content of neem seed for biodiesel production. This study therefore, is intended to consider the production of biodiesel from neem seed in terms of quantity and optimum moisture content that gives the maximum yield of biodiesel by transesterification. The main materials used in this research are neem seeds and it was gotten from Federal University of Technology (FUTO) and Ihiagwa environment. The study result shows that presence of moisture in neem seeds can be an impediment to production of biodiesel just as free fatty acid (FFA).Thus in most conventional biodiesel production processes, refined raw materials are used otherwise the reaction could either seize to occur or result in low biodiesel yield and quality. The neem seeds used were first sun dried and finally oven dried to various moisture contents of 14.1, 12.3, 10.5, 8.2, and 6.8%wb respectively. The dried seeds which measured 10kg per sample were ground using attrition mill and the oil was extracted using solvent extraction (Soxhlet extraction method, nhexane) process. During the transesterification process, the non-edible neem seed oil was used as the feedstock with potassium hydroxide (KOH) and methanol as catalyst and alcohol respectively. The free fatty acid content of the refined oil was 8.42mg/KOH which corresponds to free fatty acid (FFA) value of 4.20%. The FFA was further reduced to less than 1% by two step acid esterification processes. From the results, various yields of both neem oil and biodiesel were obtained and it was found that the treatment at moisture content of 8.2%wb gave the highest yield of neem oil and neem biodiesel of 4.5 and 86.2% respectively. The regression models of the yield of both oil and biodiesel against moisture content gave R2 values of 0.951 and 0.956 respectively.
Neem Seed, Moisture Content, Neem Biodiesel, Neem Oil, Transesterification
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