Taguchi Optimization for Waste Cooking Oil Based Biodiesel Preparation

Abstract

Biodiesel is a promising future fuel. In the recent times lots of research has been done to make the waste product as a valuable product. The option which best suits is the biodiesel which can be obtained from Waste cooking oil using Various methods. The prominenet technique is the one which gives best results with the addition of less parameters involved in it. Biodiesel is acquired from edible, non-edible vegetable oils and animal fats as well. Well, a known route to manufacture biodiesel is trans-esterification of acylglycerol that undergo catalyzed esterification with methanol. With an aid of a suitable experimental design, it is vital to optimize various parameters that affect product yield and quality. A novelty of our work lies in implementing Taguchi Design for process optimization. The analysis gives an optimized set of process parameters namely oil to alcohol molar ratio as 1:7, catalyst congregation as 1%, latency as 20 min as well as intense heat as 50 °C. using these optimum conditions, the biodiesel prepared is found to have the highest yield of 75.18%, moreover diesel quality is also acceptable as per ASTM criteria. Its environmental benefits and renewability attract both industry and academia for further research.