Converting Waste Cooking Oil into Biodiesel using Microwaves and High Voltage Technology

Abstract

Increasing fuel demand has an impact on decreasing fossil energy reserves. One of the solution to solve this problem is by increasing the production of biomass fuels, for example, biodiesel. Biodiesel can be produced from waste cooking oil through transesterification stage that reacts oil molecules with alcohol and catalyst to produce methyl esters. Heating method that can be used is combined of microwaves and high voltage technology. Microwaves technology utilizes wave emission which is absorbed and reflected by the sample to make sample's temperature being higher than surface's temperature of reactor's wall. In the process of producing biodiesel, reaction temperature is one of the several factors that is affected for heating process. From this research, we had optimum reaction temperature to get good quality product is at 60°C with 88.88% yield, 0.88 gr/ml for density, 2.52 cSt for viscosity, 102.5°C for flash point, 0.27% for water content, and 0.33 mg-KOH/gr-sample.