3. Results and discussions
The transesterification reaction using KOH as a catalyst gave an excellent 100% FAME yield at 60 _C and 1:10 M ratio of lipid to methanol (Fig. 2). Further decrease in temperature to 40 _C reduced the yield of FAME (Fig. 2). Changing the molar ratio from 1:3 to 1:10 greatly influenced the yield of FAME (Fig. 2). This indicates that a high amount of methanol increases the yield of the biodiesel. Lipid to methanol molar ratio 1:10 and 60 _C were found to give the highest FAME conversion for the base catalyzed reaction. Kinetics of the base catalyzed transesterification was studied at 1:10 M ratio of lipid to methanol and at 60 _C temperature. Rapid conversion of lipid to FAME was observed during the base catalyzed
transesterification of lipid to methanol (Fig. 3). At 10 min, 89% of FAME was formed; and after two hours of reaction 100% FAME yield was achieved (Fig. 3). Using KOH as a catalyst, high FAME conversion within short reaction times (10 min to 2 h) was previously reported (Ma and Hanna, 1999; Darnoko and Cheryan,2000; Karmee and Chadha, 2005). Recently, Yang et al. (2014a)