Renewable Energy (Biodiesel), Re-defined

The attention of developing nations needs to be drawn to alternative, renewable, biodegradable and non-toxic fuel like biodiesel. This is to serve as a means of diversifying their economy and cut down their dependence on the petroleum sector only, not only that it will give them a better insight in recognizing latest technology in order to meet the new age requirements. Also, it will reduce their contributions to global warming through the emissions from the combustion of conventional fuels. As we all know bio deals with life (living things) while biomasses deals with living things waste which can be converted to fuel. In this work, pretreated oil from Shea (Vitellaria paradoxa) nut was used. The physicochemical properties of the oil were determined for its apt essential for biodiesel production. Furthermore, biodiesel production using the pretreated oil was optimized using Central Composite Design (CCD) and emission properties of the various biodiesel blends were evaluated using Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Response Surface Methodology (RSM).