Investigating the Effect of Temperature, Molar Ratio of Ethylene Glycol to Oil, and Catalyst Amount on BioLube Production Yield of Neem Seed Oil

Excessive use of petroleum-based lubricants and their hazardous disposal has increased environmental pollution; hence the need for eco-friendly lubricants has been increased to meet the requirement of the industry and automotive. Due to the oil crisis, the world’s attention has been diverted to producing bio-lubricants from non-edible sources. The use of non-edible sources can overcome the problems of toxicity, hazardous nature, and non-biodegradability. This study discusses the effect of various parameters on transesterification reaction to produce bio lubricant from Neem oil. The dried neem seeds were crushed, and the oil was extracted using the Soxhlet extraction method using n-hexane. The bio lube was produced by a double transesterification process using CaO as a catalyst. The effect of temperature, the molar ratio of ethylene glycol to oil, and catalyst wt% on yield bio lubricant was observed. The temperature varied from 110 to 140 °C, molar ratios of ethylene glycol to oil varied from 2:1 to 8:1, and the catalyst wt% was 0.8 to 1.6%, keeping the reaction time and other conditions constant. During the experimentation, it was observed that the yield was low at 110°C, but as the temperature increased, yield also increased, but no significant change in yield was observed beyond 130°C. The maximum yield observed at 130°C, and 140°C was 93.7% and 94.37%, respectively. Similarly, as the molar ratio increases, the yield of bio lube also increases, and the maximum conversion was 94.3% achieved at an ethylene glycol to oil molar ratio of 8:1, but a molar ratio 6:1 may be considered optimum because there is no substantial increase in conversion after 8:1. Moreover, the profile was observed by varying the amount of catalyst and it is evident from the results, that the amount of catalyst increases as the conversion increases from 66% to 95%; however, at a catalyst ratio of 1.6 wt %, the yield decreased slightly to 94.2. It has been observed that the temperature significantly impacts the production yield of Biolube.