| Abstrakt: |
Biodiesel, an alternative green energy for fossil diesel, is very much inevitable and valuable in two ways when derived from non-edible oil resources: one, significantly reducing the production costs and the other, eliminating the food vs. fuel dispute. One such novel feedstock, namely, Saraca asoca seeds have been investigated to produce biodiesel. This work uncovers the potential of Saraca asoca seeds as novel feedstock for biodiesel and its modeling-optimization done with ANN-GA, and evaluation of fuel properties of biodiesel and its blend with diesel. The acid value of S. asoca seed oil (8.43 mg KOH/g) was >2 mg KOH/g. Hence, a dual stage acid-base transesterification was employed. Transesterification parameters, namely, methanol to oil mole ratio, catalyst concentration, reaction time, and temperature were optimized using ANN-GA. The optimal ANN topology (4-7-1) was obtained by the heuristic analysis of R and MSE values. After optimization, the maximum yield predicted by ANN-GA was 97.04% corresponding to the experimental yield of 96% achieved at 69.99°C with methanol to oil ratio of 10.24:1 and catalyst concentration of 1.18 wt% in 50.11 min. Hypothesis tests were accomplished to prove the validation of the developed ANN-GA model. The significant fuel properties of S.asoca biodiesel and its blends with diesel were investigated and compared with ASTM D6751 and EN 14214 standards. The new S. asoca biodiesel and its blends of diesel have satisfactorily complied with the above standards and could be a reliable alternative to diesel in diesel engine applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
