Biodiesel production from castor oil: ANN modeling and kinetic parameter estimation

This research work concerns with the transesterification of castor oil with methanol to form biodiesel. As the free fatty acid content in castor oil is more than 1%, an acid catalyst namely, H2SO4 has been used for esterification. The experimental conditions were determined using central composite design method and the experiments were conducted in a 2 L working volume fully controlled reactor. The input conditions namely, catalyst concentration, methanol to oil molar ratio and temperature were varied, and % fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) content was determined. Based upon the experimental data, an ANN model has been developed which is used to predict %FAME yield for a given set of input conditions. The experimental data and the data predicted by the ANN model have been used to estimate the rate constants of a kinetic model. The ANN model predicts the % FAME yield within ±8% deviation, and the developed kinetic model shows successfully the effect of methanol to oil molar ratio on % FAME yield at 60 ◦C and 3% (v/v) catalyst loading.