Optimization of biodiesel production process for homogeneous catalysis from used cooking oil

Abstract

It is well known that the used cooking oil (UCO) is responsible for the high pollution found in groundwater, fact that leads to increase treatment cost of wastewater, moreover, the environmental problems produced by the use of diesel fuel increase the need of seeking alternatives to decrease this problems by means of the reuse of UCO, finding a cleaner alternative fuel. Biofuel such as biodiesel is considered as one of this alternative having environmental advantage due to decrease of pollutant emissions in diesel engines. Biodiesel from UCO is produced throughout the transesterification reaction, using alcohol and a catalyst. This paper reports the effect of temperature, alcohol/oil molar ratio, and catalyst amount used over the yield of the transesterification reaction using oil from hotel industry. The homogeneous catalysts was based in NaOH from 0.5 and 0.7% by weight, the range operation temperatures were between 50 and 60 °C, with molar ratio alcohol / oil 6/1 and 9/1. Quite high yield values were shown, among 83 and 95%, with a statistical error of less than 0.5.