The studied work presents the kinetics of the esterification of Free Fatty Acids (FFA) in jatropha oil with methanol (Alc) using glycerol based solid acid catalyst (SAC) at varying catalyst mass concentrations from 2.5 to 4.0 %, temperature 50-65 °C that is upto refluxing temperature and atmospheric pressure and Alc-FFA mole ratios ranging from 7.2:1 to 28.8:1 with respect to the FFA present in the oil matrix. The optimized esterification parameters were observed as 3.5% mass concentration of glycerol based SAC with 21.6:1, Alc-FFA mole ratio at temperature of 65 °C for a time period of 4 h which provided a conversion of about 97.03%. Based on the experimental results a second order kinetic model is proposed. The temperature influence on the rate of the reaction, Arrhenius constants and activation energies were evaluated. The reaction heat and energy of activation for the reaction were found to be 10.315 kcal/mol and 11.38 kcal/mol respectively.
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