The production of methanol from different sources as alternate biofuel as well as gasolineblend fuel component will help in mitigating the adverse effect of using gasoline from
hydrocarbon as fuel for internal combustion engines. Kinetics and thermodynamics studies
were carried out in this study using the process of hydrolysis of methyl acetate catalyzed with
hydrochloric acid to produce methanol. The method employed was backward-titration which
was used to determine the concentration of methyl acetate catalyzed with hydrochloric acid in
a batch reactor. The titration was performed using a known volume (5 ml) of the reaction
mixture at different time intervals (10 mins – 50 mins at intervals of 10 mins) against sodium
hydroxide. The results obtained were fitted into first, second and nth order kinetic models. The
analysis revealed that the hydrolysis followed first order kinetic model initially, but with
increases in temperature, the second order kinetic model became evident and gave the best fit
for the hydrolysis at the optimum temperature of 40 oC. The nth order kinetic model showed
that at the investigated temperatures, the order of the hydrolysis of methyl acetate was < 1.
The values of the changes in enthalpy (2.04 KJ/mole), entropy (-1.52 J/Mol.K) and Gibbs free
energy (2.50 KJ/mole) obtained showed that the hydrolysis was endothermic; the degree of
disorderliness was negative (-1.52J/Mol.K); and the reaction process was non-spontaneous.
These studies revealed that the kinetics and thermodynamics behaviors of the hydrolysis of
methyl acetate catalyzed with hydrochloric acid would be a good source for the production of
methanol.