Kinetics of the KOH Catalyzed-Methanolysis for Biodiesel Production from Fat of Tra Catfish

Transesterification of fat of Tra catfish with methanol in the presence of the KOH catalyst yields fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) and glycerol (GL). The effects of the reaction temperature and reaction time on rate constants and kinetic order were investigated. Three regions were observed. In the initial stage, the immiscibility of the Tra fat and methanol limited the reaction rate, hence this region was controlled by the mass transfer. Subsequent to this region, produced FAME like a co-solvent made the reaction mixture homogeneous, therefore the conversion rate increased rapidly so it was controlled by the kinetic parameters of the reaction until the equilibrium was approached in the final slow region. A second-order kinetic mechanism was proposed involving second regions for the forward reaction. The rate determining step for the overall KOH catalyzed-methanolysis of Tra fat was the conversion of triglycerides (TG) to diglycerides (DG). This rate constant was increased from 0.003 to 0.019 min-1 when the reaction temperature was increased from 35 to 60o C. Its calculated activation energy was 14.379 (kcal.mol-1).