Making Biodiesel from Waste Vegetable Oil

Day by day fuel is getting expensive and inflation is hitting new highs across every country across the world. Everyone has started looking for cheap substitutes for every thing in the world. So why should diesel fuel stay behind. Making Biodiesel from waste vegetable oil is an upcoming way of preserving energy and meeting your own requirements without depending on anyone.

Vegetable Oil is commonly available everywhere and there at every home and most households dump the waste oil rather than utilizing that. Making biodiesel from waste vegetable oil is one of the most productive ways to utilize waste vegetable oil.
Biodiesel is a diesel fuel that is made by reacting vegetable oil (cooking oil) with other common chemicals that are easily available in the market. Biodiesel may be used in any diesel automotive engine in its pure form or blended with petroleum-based diesel, so need not worry about anything. No modifications are required, and the result is a less-expensive, renewable, clean-burning fuel.

Making biodiesel with vegetable oil has two different cases one is that with fresh oil and other is with waste oil. Making biodiesel from waste vegetable oil is totally a different case from that of fresh oil.

Waste vegetable oil will have been reheated several times during the course of its usage and therefore needs to be treated differently. The reheating will cause some of the fatty acids bonded to the glycerol to break away and float freely in the vegetable oil hence make them free and then known as Free Fatty Acid (FFA). There are two ways of dealing with free fatty acids and solve the problem –
•    Esterify the Free Fatty Acids creating methyl esters then proceeding with the transesterification.
•    Increase the amount of catalyst in the single transesterifaction process so that the additional catalyst neutralises the FFAs creating soap as an additional by-product.
In the process waste vegetable oil is made to react with methanol and a catalyst. The catalyst would either Sodium Hydroxide or Potassium Hydroxide. The additional catalyst would react in turn with the free fatty acids and as a result give out soap. Now one has to separate the soap from the biodiesel. After that is done we have to wash the biodiesel fuel and filtrate it to 5 microns through a machine process, which is not feasible by hand. Then the fuel has to be dried again and the biodiesel has to be extracted from it.
If we try to classify the steps we can do it in the following way –
•    Filtration of inbound waste oil
•    Drying the fuel (i.e. removing water content, especially in the case of used oils)
•    Transesterification (specifically, the separation of the methyl esters from the glycerol)
•    Settling period
•    Separation of the biodiesel fuel from the soap
•    Washing the biodiesel fuel
•    Filtration to 5 microns
•    Drying the fuel again
•    Final products of biodiesel fuel and the by-products.
Though over here it may seem as very process, it is not easy, as it seems. But nonetheless one can always try.

Does Waste Oil for Biodiesel Really Work?

Have you ever given a though about the world? Do you know about global warming and pollution and have you ever tried to figure out a way so that you can combat it effectively? Surely, you must have read about the million of tonnes of greenhouse gases that are produced every year due to the burning of diesel in cars and trucks. There is an alternative way you can save your planet and also lighten the load on your purse.

Usage of Waste vegetable oil (WVO) is one way to do this and the same can be used as an alternative source of fuel that can be used for both heating and also for transportation. Natural fuels or fossil fuels are limited and one day their supply will be exhausted, hence it is better is we found out alternative fuels before it becomes too late. People often wonder if waste oil for biodiesel really works or whether this is just another myth.

Scientists all over the world are using waste oil to manufacture biodiesel and this has been proved as the best and the cheapest form of alternative fuel. Apart from the low costs there are many other benefits that this alternative fuel provides one with. Some of them are reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases and reduction of air pollution. It is high time that you too decided and switched over to this new and alternative fuel to ensure that the future generations live in a healthy atmosphere and do now face scarcity of fuel.

Suggested Reading:
+ make Biodiesel from Motor Oil
+ Waste Vegetable oil for Biodiesel fuel