Preliminary study of mixing used cooking oil and lemon peel essential oil as an alternative fuel to replace biodiesel

Abstract

Biodiesel is an environmentally friendly renewable bio-energy with many advantages over diesel fuel. The disadvantage of biodiesel is that the price is still relatively expensive so it cannot compete with diesel fuel. This high price is due to the high cost of raw materials and manufacturing process costs. Raw materials such as palm oil, methanol and methyl acetate are expensive, and the transesterification and interesterification processes require long process stages that require a lot of energy supply. The solution to overcome this problem is to use cheap raw materials and a simple manufacturing process. Used cooking oil is household waste that has prospects as a raw material. Another ingredient used is lemon essential oil. Lemon essential oil can be made yourself by extracting lemon peel waste using a boiling or steaming process. The lemon essential oil used is also small, namely a maximum of 5% of the mass of used cooking oil. It is hoped that mixing used cooking oil with lemon essential oil can replace biodiesel. Lemon essential oil is a bio-additive that can improve the quality of used cooking oil to approach the physical properties of biodiesel. With this new process, it is hoped that it can produce fuel that is cheap but of good quality. The aim of the research is to obtain a new fuel to replace biodiesel that is cheaper and more efficient, namely with cheap raw materials and fewer process stages so that it will reduce production costs. The research began with the activation of zeolite as an adsorbent for purifying used cooking oil with variables including zeolite mass of 400 grams, calcination temperature of 300⁰C, activation time of 2 hours and zeolite size > 80 mesh. The second stage of the research was purifying used cooking oil with zeolite using a variable volume of 3 liters of used cooking oil and a purification time of 1 hour. The third stage of the research was mixing purified used cooking oil with lemon essential oil with variable volume of essential oil (3, 4, 5, 6, 7% oil volume) and mixing temperature (30, 40, 50⁰C), mixing time 60 minutes, stirring speed 500 rpm and oil volume 150 mL. After the mixing time and the sample temperature reached room temperature, an analysis of the density, acid number, viscosity and FFA of used cooking oil with bio-additive lemon essential oil was carried out. The analysis results are compared with the biodiesel standard SNI 7182-2015 to see whether the product/sample approaches the physical properties of biodiesel