Production and testing of mahua oil-based biodiesel synthesized through heterogeneous catalyst using experimental and numerical method.

A two-step treatment  of mahua oil was conducted to synthesize mahua biodiesel using heterogeneous biomass-based catalyst derived from mahua shell. Mahua oil having higher free fatty acid (FFA) content (about 19%) was esterified to reduce the FFA content up to 1%. The esterification process was carried out using 200 mL mahua oil, 5:1 molar ratio (methanol:oil), and 2.