Production of biodiesel from vegetable oil using microware irradiation

Abstract

The petroleum oil supply crisis, the increase in demand and the price eruption have led to a search for an alternative fuel of bio-origin in India. Among the alternative fuels, biodiesel is considered as a sustainable renewable alternative fuel to fossil diesel. Non-edible jatropha oil has considerable potential for the production of biodiesel in India. The production of biodiesel from jatropha oil using a conventional heating method takes more than 1h. In this work, microwave irradiation has been used as a source of heat for the transesterification reaction. A domestic microwave oven was modified and used for microwave heating of the reactants. The time taken for biodiesel production using microwave irradiation was 1 min. The fuel property analysis shows that the properties of jatropha oil biodiesel satisfy the biodiesel standards, and are close to the fossil diesel standards. From this work, it is concluded that biodiesel can be produced from vegetable oil using microwave irradiation, with a significant reduction in production time.