| Summary: | Research of synthesize methyl ester sulfonates surfactant (MES) from
palm oil with CaO catalyst has been done through a two-stage reaction. The first
stage was transesterification process of palm oil with methanol and NaOH
catalyst for 90 minutes at 65 °C. The second stage was methyl ester sulfonation
with sodium bisulfite (NaHSO3) at 90 °C for 4.5 hours using CaO catalyst.
The results showed that methyl ester of palm oil, contained two
dominant esters, i.e methyl palmitate (43.64%) and methyl oleate (51.16%). IR
spectra showed that sulfonation of methyl ester with NaHSO3 was successfully
achieved. The use of CaO catalyst in the process of sulfonation provided
optimum results at CaO catalyst concentration of 1% (w/w) which produced MES
surfactant which has an active ingredient content of 11.9%, was able to lower
the water surface tension by 35.38 dyne/cm, has ability to stabilize emulsions of
water-xylene up to 60.9%, and has HLB value 12.75.
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