OIL EXTRACTION FROM CASTOR SEED THEN CANDLE PRODUCTION FROM THE CASTOR MEAL

Abstract

Oil can be produced from different raw materials like vegetables, castor seed, soya been & rape seed. Castor oil is one of the most important oil that has diversified uses. After the crude castor oil extracted, usually the residue is used for fertilizer. In our research work, oil is extracted using solvent extraction technique and the remaining residue (meal) is used for candle production for home use. The extracted crude oil mainly characterized physical parameters (density, color & specific gravity) and with chemical characteristic (pH). The physical analysis gives the following results; light yellow and dark yellow for color, 959 kg/m3 and 0.959 density and specific gravity respectively. Gram of castor oil was 5.92 pH values at 21℃. Then, candle from castor meal with bees wax 50%, produced and physical test was conducted. The candle produced in our experiment result it’s mainly characterized by physical parameter such as Color of the flame; length of flame and burning almost same as compared to commercial candle, but durability of burning increase and its drip fastness slightly decrease. As well as we tried differentiated by solvent type used to extract. The Candle produced from meal using ethanol as solvent slightly different from solvent hexane The Color Of the flame almost the same for both solvents. From the laboratory result, duration of candle burning increase using hexane solvent because the meal was having not the same amount of oil to ethanol. Lastly the detail economic analysis and rough social and environmental impacts have been assessed. During a production capacity of oil 500ton/year it is possible to get 10060tons/year of candle. The economical evaluation of our project shows that the plant has payback period (1.06years), breakeven point (21%) rate of return (50.8%). Besides, the process is environmentally friendly and it enables the farmers in arid areas to be involved in castor seed plantation which again contributes or Carbon dioxide sink