Direct synthesis of biodiesel from tomato Lycopersicon esculentum Mill. seeds

Abstract

The objective of this research is to study biodiesel production from tomato seed oil using conc. H2SO4 as a homogeneous acid catalyst. Throughout this study tomato seeds were obtained from tomato sauce manufacturing in March (2010) and January (2011). Extraction process of tomato seed oil was carried out under refluxing in solvents (hexane and methanol) with and without soxhlet apparatus. Under refluxing in methanol and hexane without soxhlet apparatus, it gave oil product 25% w/w and 32% w/w, respectively. While refluxing in methanol and hexane with soxhlet apparatus, it gave oil product 24% w/w and 31% w/w, respectively. Free fatty acid content of tomato seed oil obtained from seeds in March 2010 was 40% (extracted with hexane) and 60% (extracted with MeOH) which was higher than the oil obtained from seed in January (2011) (17% from extraction with hexane and 26% from extraction with MeOH). Biodiesel production was carried out directly during extraction using soxhlet for 10 hours to give 99.5% conversion and 24.25 % weight of methyl ester/weight of seeds while biodiesel production from tomato seed oil gave 96.21% conversion.