Studies on parametric standardization of mechanical oil expression of Jatropha seeds
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Date
2008-01
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G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar - 263145 (Uttarakhand)
Abstract
In order to meet the growing requirements of energy, the government has envisaged a plan to supplement the petroleum fuels to a larger extent by biofuels which chiefly comprises biodiesel and bioethanol. The biodiesel programme emphasizes on production of biodiesel from non-edible oils derived from Jatropha (Jatropha Curcas L.), Karanja (Pongamia Pinnata), Mahua (Madhuca Inidica), Neem (Azadirachta indica), Jojoba (Simmondsia chinensis), etc. Amongst these, jatropha has been identified as a major source for production of biodiesel and an ambitious programme has been launched to cultivate jatropha on wasteland available in India. An average production of 5 tonne per hectare can produce about 2 tonne of biodiesel. The seeds of jatropha contain 35 to 50 percent oil whereas its kernel contains 45 to 60 percent oil. There is no established process for oil expression from jatropha seed and mechanical oil expellers exclusively for jatropha seed are not available. The conventional mechanical oil expellers are generally used to extract oil from jatropha seed and oil recovery is very low. It is expected that expression of oil from jatropha seed is not only governed by physical properties of seed but factors like seed moisture content, hull content in seed–kernel hull mixture as well as configuration of wormset of an oil expeller may also have significant effect on oil expression. Studies were, therefore, conducted to standardize the mechanical oil expression parameters of jatropha seed using a 1 TPD, MERADO make, mechanical oil expeller. No expression of oil from whole jatropha seed was observed at seed moisture content of 7.3%. Therefore, different higher levels of seed moisture content were attained by cold and hot water sprinkling, hot water soaking and steaming treatments. The expression of oil using seed kernel alone resulted in formation of pastes inside the compression chamber, therefore, seed kernels were mixed with 10, 20, 30 and 40 percent hull. The expression of oil by changing wormset configurations were also studied. It was observed that average length, width and thickness of jatropha seed was 17.8 mm, 11.1 mm and 8.6 mm respectively. The mass of thousand seed was found to be 581.4 g with initial moisture content of 7.3%. The oil content of seed was 36.6% and that of kernel as 61.2%. The whole jatropha seed treatment using steam at 1050C for 15 min raising the moisture content of seed from 7.3% to 18.2% is recommended. The oil expression, efficiency of oil expression, specific power consumption and expeller throughput at above treatment were 26.8%, 73.3%, 0.136 kW/kg, 28.2 kg/h and Rs. 1.8 per kg respectively.
Description
Thesis-PhD
Keywords
Jatropha, plant oils, mechanical methods, standardization, econometrics, agricultural engineering, seeds, fuel resources, natural resources