Epoxidation of mixture of waste cooking oil and soybean oil with different compositions

Abstract

Epoxidation of soybean oil (SO) blended with waste cooking oil (WCO) of different mass ratio (90:10, 80:20, 70:30, 60:40 and 50:50) was carried out at reaction temperature of 65 °C and reaction time of 7 h. Physicochemical properties of the reagent and product such as viscosity at 40 °C and 100 °C, viscosity index, iodine index as well as FT-IR spectral analysis are studied to investigate the effect of the mixing ratio of SO and WCO on C=C conversion and physical properties of epoxidized product. The experiment results showed that conversion of C=C in the feed oil of different blending ratio through epoxidation at 65 °C and 7 h could reach high value (almost 98 %) with corresponding Iodine Value of all products of nearly 2. The viscosity of epoxidized oil at both 40 °C and 100 °C increased remarkably compared to the values of soybean oil while viscosity index decreased. However, the VI of epoxidized products are in the range of requirement for lubricating oil. Among all samples studied, the mixture of SO and WCO of 90:10 (mass ratio) had the best lubricating properties, with the highest viscosity at both 40 °C and 100 °C (138.22 and 18.50 cSt) and viscosity index (151).