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Biodiesel is a renewable fuel commonly used to replace diesel. Currently, biodiesel production is controversial in food security circles because edible oils are used as biodiesel feedstock. This study investigates the use of nonedible oil, recovered from biodiesel wastewater (BWW), as an alternative feedstock for biodiesel production.BWW was treated with acidification with H 2 SO 4 to recover the oil phase from the water. The major components of the recovered oil, 56.9 wt% ester and 38.1 wt% free fatty acids (FFA), demonstrated its potential as a feedstock for biodiesel production by esterification. The optimal conditions for biodiesel production from the recovered oil were 5 wt% H 2 SO 4 , a 2:1 M ratio of ethanol to FFA, a reaction temperature of 70 C, and a reaction time of 120 min. These conditions produced biodiesel with a purity of 97.7 wt% and a yield of 98.5 wt%. Additionally, the oil recovery process greatly reduced the pollutant load in BWW, bringing the cost of treatment below the usual cost of treating BWW with a high content of organic matter. K E Y W O R D Sbiodiesel, esterification, oil recovery, waste management, wastewater

Abstract-The production of biodiesel by transesterification in existing processes requires excess alcohol, typically 100%, over its stoichiometric requirement in order to drive the chemical reaction to complete. This excess alcohol must be recovered and purified for reusing by rectification and distillation, which involves additional capital and operating costs. Therefore, combination of reactor and distillation column in only one unit called reactive distillation column (RD) may lead to an enormous capital-investment cost reduction. This research is proposed the feasibility study of biodiesel production from palm oil by transesterification using reactive distillation. The hypothesis is to reduce the amount of alcohol in the feed stream closing to its stoichiometric ratio with oil. This dues to the less energy used in the methanol recovery for the processes. The effects of process parameters were conducted by lab scale RD packed column. The results indicated that process parameters of 900 ml/hr flow rate, reboiler temperature 90°C with 4.0:1 molar ratio of methanol to oil and residence time of 5 minutes in the column produced 92.75 percent biodiesel purity.