Optimized Biodiesel Production from Crotalaria juncea L. oil for usage in Compression Ignition Engine

Abstract

Biodiesel being the trend in replacing the conventional diesel fuel in considerate with the depletion of fossil fuel. Crotalaria juncea L. were selected as the source because availability is one of the major considerations for the fuel cost. India contributes 27% of Crotalaria juncea L. seeds among the world population. On extracting the oil from the seeds the FFA value was found to be $\gt 2$% hence the two stage trans-esterification process was incorporated. The process parameters for the trans-esterification process were investigated for the optimum reaction values. On experimentation it was detailed that the molar ratio of 0.91 v/v, catalyst concentration of 0.94 wt % and reaction time of 120 min were the optimal process parameter values which gave the maximum biodiesel yield of 98.1 %. To validate the result, Bayesian regularized algorithm incorporated in Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model was utilized for the optimization of process parameters. The model was validated with performance evaluation. After predicting the process parameters it was found that the ANN predicted values were in correlation with experimental values.