Abstract:
The growth of the biodiesel industry created a lot of wastes such as oil palm empty fruit bunch, crude glycerol and etc. Both of oil palm empty fruit bunch and crude glycerol can be used to produce bio-oil through a liquefaction process. The main components of crude glycerol, including fatty acid, methanol, water and salt, affect the bio-oil yield and its quality. This research attempted to study the effects of oleic acid on liquefaction of oil palm empty fruit bunch in glycerol and water. Experiments were conducted in an autoclave reactor. The influences of liquefaction temperature, retention time, oleic acid content in media and types of media on bio-oil yield and oxygen content in the bio-oil were investigated. The results showed that bio-oil yield and oxygen content was decreased with increasing temperature from 325 to 375 °C. The retention time did not affect on bio-oil yield and oxygen content. The effects of oleic acid in various types of media such as glycerol, water and mixed media between glycerol and water were also examined. In case of using glycerol, the bio-oil yield and oxygen content increased with increasing oleic acid content and reached the maximum yield of 16 wt.% at 20 wt.% of oleic acid content. In water media, the bio-oil yield was increased whilst oxygen content was decreased with increasing %oleic acid. In case of mixed media, an increase in oleic acid content gave a comparable trend to the case of using water. However, the bio-oil yield obtained in this case was obviously higher than that obtained in case of using water or glycerol alone