DefinePK

Abstract

Biopetrol is defined as fuel which has the same characteristics with commercial petrol in terms of its molecular formula. The current petrol disaster and the valuable oleic acid loss by disposal to environment are the problematic reasons that the biopetrol should be synthesized from oleic acid. The objective of this study is to find the concentration of biopetrol (dominated by isooctane) from oleic acid in palm oil waste. Catalytic cracking process is used to synthesize isooctane from oleic acid, using zeolite as catalyst. Oleic acid is naturally in liquid form, so oleic acid is directly heated until achieving isooctane’s boiling point of 98°C to form new arrangements of carbon compounds including isooctane. Various masses of catalyst are used, which are 1, 5, 10 and 20 g. After the cracking process is completed, the samples from oleic acid’s distillates were collected. The desired isooctane obtained is around 0.04-2.15% in the distilled oleic acid, with the presence of hexane as dilution solvent. After applying back calculation to obtain actual isooctane concentrations in both distillates with comparison to the pure isooctane, the highest concentration of the desired isooctane in oleic acid distillate is 7.886% for 20 g zeolite.