Development of fatty acids as feedstocks for biofuels from Gmelina arborea waste leaves

This work was aimed at; investigating a clean method of removing waste leaves from the waste stream, converting them into fatty acids, biodiesel feedstock, or upgrading to deoxygenated fuels for higher energy content. Waste leaves of Gmelina arborea were collected, cleaned, and pulverized with ceramic mortar and pestle. A 50g of the pulverized leaves were thermally hydrolyzed over 0.75g of H2SO4, NaOH, and ZnCl2 catalysts and 500mL distilled water on a GallenKamp hot plate magnetic stirrer at 100oC for 30 minutes. The extracts were filtered with a sheet cloth, dried with 0.2% anhydrous MgSO4 and weighed. Each extract was analyzed with a gas chromatography and mass spectroscopy (GC-MS) machine to determine its components and compositions. The quantities of fatty acids extracted over H2SO4, NaOH, and ZnCl2 were 228.30g, 184.30g and 118.43g respectively. The biodiesel estimated from the fatty acids extracted was found to be 240.02g, 193.8g and 124.39g respectively. Also, the estimated bio-hydrogenated gasoline (BHG) and bio-hydrogenated diesel (BHD) were found to be 192.27g, 154.97g and 87.37g respectively. The process yields more biodiesel than conventional seed oils. This process would be more economical to achieve a biofuel economy than the use of lipids from oil seeds. Keywords: biofuels, development, fatty acids, feedstocks, Gmelina arborea, waste leaves