Abstract
The production of biodiesel to substitute fossil fuels has been challenging to apply in many countries especially developing countries. Given the importance of this fact, this study includes the production of biodiesel from waste vegetable oils by pre-treatment followed by transesterification reaction with methanol using a KM micro-mixer reactor. KM micro-mixer happened to give noticeable enhancement for the production of biodiesel quality compared to the normal batch reactor at optimum conditions. The parameters affecting biodiesel production process such as alcohol to oil molar ratio, catalyst concentration, the presence of tetra-hydrofuran (THF) as a co-solvents and the volumetric flow rates of inlet fluids were optimized. The properties of the produced biodiesel were compared with its parent waste oil through different characterization techniques. The presence of methyl ester groups at the produced biodiesel was confirmed using both the Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). Moreover, the thermal analysis of the produced biodiesel and the comparable waste oil indicated that the product after the transesterification process began to vaporize at 120oC which makes it lighter than its parent oil which started to vaporize at around 300oC. The maximum biodiesel production yield of 97% was recorded using 12:1 methanol to oil molar ratio in presence of both 1% NaOH and THF/methanol volume ratio 0.3 at 60 mL/h flow rate.
Highlights
The idea of using alternative fuels has been widely spreading for many years as a replacement for Fossil fuels
In order to optimize the processing parameters affecting biodiesel production according to the main equation of the transesterification process using KM mixer
Effect of methanol to oil molar ratio: The most effective variable affecting the methyl ester production yield during the transesterification reaction is the molar ratio of alcohol to waste vegetable oil
Summary
The idea of using alternative fuels has been widely spreading for many years as a replacement for Fossil fuels. The direct use of Vegetable oils in diesel engines was found impractical due to several factors, such as the high viscosity, acid composition and free fatty acid content. They require further modifications for effective use [2]. Biodiesels are mono-alkyl esters of long chain fatty acid derived from renewable lipid feedstock The interest of this alternative energy resource is that the fatty acid methyl esters, known as biodiesel, have similar characteristics of petro-diesel oil which allows its use in compression motors without any engine modification [4]. The idea of using waste vegetable oil (WVO) has been introduced as an economical solution which gives a waste management solution [6]
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