Comprehensive process design of biodiesel from waste cooking oil (WCO) using magnetic nano-catalyst

Abstract

The exploration for economic, sustainable and environment approachable alternatives to petroleum fuel, as well as its synthesis and utilization in practical applications is one of the trending fields of research at the moment. Biodiesel is one such fuel capable of meeting all the criteria to be classified as an alternative to petrol or diesel. Production through transesterification of organic oils does not pose doubts about the sustainability and eco-friendliness of this energy source but its production still is a challenging task due to the expenditure involved in it. A clean environment has become a basic need but with pace of rapid urbanization and industrialization, energy needs are also rapidly increase. In this background the production of Biodiesel from waste cooking oil by Nano-magnetite catalyst has been investigated. Also, the design of the process plant has been studied using Aspen Plus and manual calculation. The Nano-catalyst was synthesized by reverse co-precipitation method using iron salts. The appearance of two well defined peaks at 500 cm-1 and 630 cm-1 in the FTIR spectra are due to the presence of Fe - O which confirmed the successful synthesis of iron oxide nanoparticles. SEM image demonstrations that Fe3O4 nanoparticles particles show spherical shape with a size less than 50 nm. The production of biodiesel has been studied using Soxhlet extractor with solvent (n-hexane), to extract the oil for six hours. Also, the analysis of biodiesel has been carried out test run has been conducted for testing the engine performance using the produced biodiesel and comparing with three different type biodiesels, fossil diesel, and 50% and 40% Biodiesel. The process of producing biodiesel in an industry has designed based on the equipment's used and suggested a process design based on available amount of waste cooking oil used in restaurants in Muscat.