IDENTIFICATION OF PROCESS PARAMETERS OF TOBACCO SEED OIL METHYL ESTER BY APPLIED MULTI RESPONSE TAGUCHI TECHNIQUE

Abstract

In this study, tobacco seed oil (TSO) for biodiesel production was examined. TSO is a non edible vegetable oil and a by-product of tobacco leaves production. After obtaining TSO parametric studies have been done and the KOH and NaOH catalyst are used in the transesterification method to produce tobacco seed oil methyl ester (TSOME). Although, there were many parameters related with the process, the four process parameters were only determined such as catalyst type, molar ratio of alcohol to oil, reaction temperature and catalyst amount. A multi response Taguchi technique was employed for determining the optimum combination of these process parameters. The catalyst type has two levels and whilst another parameters have three levels. Thus Taguchi's L-18 orthogonal array was chosen. Multi performance characteristics such as methyl ester amount, kinematic viscosity, density, freezing and flash points of these methyl esters were chosen. Experiment results were analyzed by calculating multi response signal-to-noise ratio (MRSN) and the optimum combination level of process parameters for the performance characteristics was obtained simultaneously using multi response Taguchi method. ANOVA was applied to determine influencing process parameters. Obtained combination was verified through confirmation experiments. MRSN obtained from confirmation experiment was placed in predicted interval then it was decided adequacy of the optimum combination.