Comparative Studies on Some Edible Oils for Biodiesel Production in Nigeria

With the growing population and subsequent increasing demand for energy in Nigeria, coupled with the under-developed electrical energy platforms and the vast problems of the convectional energy sources such as continuous gas flaring, energy crisis is still lingering and enormous. The aim of this work is to compare the quality of different blends of biodiesel produced from several vegetable oils. The biodiesel was obtained from oil of animal fat and vegetable oils of bleached palm, corn, cottonseed, groundnut and soya through transterification reaction. The physiochemical properties of four blends were measured to ascertain their adherence with the ASTM standard for biodiesel. The results show a high percentage yield from most of the feedstock with the highest yield of 95% from bleached palm oil while the lowest value of 61.5% is from animal fat. Viscosity obtained at temperatures of 10ºC to 60ºC, with the highest value of 7.717mm2/sec is from B100 of animal fat at 10ºC and lowest value of 1.840mm2/sec is from B20 of corn oil at 60ºC. Also other values for density, flash point, cold point and sulfur content all conform to the ASTM standard range.