Intrinsic Transesterification Rate of Coconut, Palm and Sunflower Oils with Methanol

Abstract

In general, most of the transesterification studies are using pseudo first order kinetics that does not reflect the precise phenomenon of the reaction. It is very likely that the observed reaction rate is affected by physical mass transfer between two immiscible reactants (methanol and oil). Therefore, in the present study, the transesterification of coconut, palm and sunflower oils with methanol were conducted in a single phase by adding methylethylketone in order to eliminate the physical mass controlled region. At 50 ⁰C, the oil conversion of coconut, palm and sunflower oils reached 0.98 within first 10 minutes. The reaction rate constant decreased and the activation energy increased as the order of coconut, palm and sunflower oils. The activation energy of intrinsic transesterification for coconut, palm and sunflower oils were 27.9, 38.0 and 57.1 kJ/mol.