The Use of Co-solvent for Insitu Transesterification of Microalgae with Base Catalyst under Microwave Irradiation

The utilization of co-solvent was considered as one of several methods to improve yield of methyl ester on in situ transesterification of microalgae. The research aims to study the effect of co-solvent in the in situ transesterification of Chlorella Sp using base catalyst under microwave irradiation. The in situ transesterification reaction carried out in a microwave reactor using 1% of base catalyst with an addition 30 ml of n-hexane as a co-solvent. The microwave was equipped with a reflux condenser and the reactor was a round bottom flask equipped with magnetic stirrer. The reaction study was performed by varying the reaction time (10, 20, 30, 40, 50) min at 450 W of microwave power. Based on the experiment result obtained that the optimal yield of methyl ester was 30.08% at 40 min. The analysis result obtained that the component of Fatty Acid Methyl Ester(FAME) from Chlorella Sp was a medium chain methyl ester (C₁₂-C₂₀) with Saturated Fatty Acid (SAFA)s as the dominant component.