Biodiesel production from yellow oleander seed oil via heterogeneous catalyst: performance evaluation of minitab response surface methodology and artificial neural network

This study demonstrates biodiesel production from yellow oleander seed oil using RSM to optimize the process parameters. Process parameters such as catalyst amount, reaction time and methanol /oil ratio were considered in this study, physiochemical properties of the biodiesel produced were also determined. From the results, the optimal condition for biodiesel yield was established at catalyst amount of 10.34 (wt/wt)/%, reaction time of 70 minutes and methanol/oil ratio of 0.1 (v/v); theoretical biodiesel yield predicted under this condition by RSM and ANN was 86.13 % (v/v) and 86.19 % (v/v) respectively, this was validated as 86.00 % (v/v). The physicochemical characteristics of the biodiesel produced showed that the oil is a suitable feedstock for biodiesel production.