India has a good number of traditional oleaginous crops that
can yield oil for both domestic and industrial purposes. As a renewable
energy resource, vegetable oils are the most promising alternative
for making biofuel. The use of vegetable oil in combustion
ignition engine (CIE) was first demonstrated by using peanut oil
in diesel engine [7]. The direct use of peanut, coconut, soybean,
sunflower, palm, linseed and rape seed oils as fuel have been attempted by many researchers [3,7–12]. However, the higher viscosity
and other physicochemical features of the oils have limited
its usage in engines for long term. Since transesterification process
of the oil for making esters was found more compatible with the
properties of fuel, the esterification process of vegetable oils have
been tried in the production of biofuels.