Yusup S., Bokhari A., Chuah L., Ahmad J., 2015, Pre-Blended Methyl Esters Production from Crude Palm and Rubber Seed Oil Via Hydrodynamic Cavitation Reactor, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 43, 517-522.
Variety of transesterification processes was widely investigated for biodiesel production to enhance the fuel quality. Energy and reaction time are the major constraints to develop a more economically process with better product quality. Hydrodynamic cavitation possesses lessen the reaction time based on conversion of feedstock to biodiesel. Current study utilized pre-blended equi-volume mixture of crude palm and rubber seed oil as the feedstock. Rubber seed oil as a non-edible feedstock for biodiesel helps to reduce the dependency on crude palm oil. The esterification and transesterification process were carried out at mini scale pilot plant with hydrodynamic cavitation reactor. The cavities were produced in the reactor by passing the fluid (methanol, oil and catalyst) under reduced pressure through constriction (orifice) at higher velocity and these cavities will collapse due to recovered pressure. The sudden collapse of cavities under pressure increased the mass transfer between oil, methanol and catalyst. This mass transfer limitation in conventional transesterification processes was overcome by hydrodynamic cavitation and hence lesser reaction time achieved. In this research the conversion of fatty acid methyl esters up to 90% was observed in 20 minutes. The produced methyl esters were analyzed for its low temperature fuel properties and it meets the international standards of EN 14214 and ASTM D 6751.
