Preparation of biodiesel from waste cooking oil

Currently the consumption of energy has increased a lot due to the growth of population, this increase cause high prize in petroleum products and serious environmental impact such as global warming,deforestation.
Biodiesel fuel represents an attractive solution due to the fact that biomass derived are renewable and sustainable. Besides , they are economic, easy to produce and readily biodegradable.

Biodiesel refers to all kind of fuels derived from vegetables oils or animals fats. Biodiesel is produced from the tryglicerides conversion, it is prepared from cooking oil. There are two ways to use waste cooking oil as a fuel, the first process is simple: collect the use vegetable oil and filter the particles out of it, in this process the car will require an additional tank to work. The second process is producing biodiesel. To produce biodiesel is needed used oil that can be collected from markets, schools and restaurants, the oil has to be dried because most of the used oil contains water. Then it pass a sterification process with low molecular weight alcohols catalized by homegenous catalyst.

The principal advantage of biodiesel is that it is a renewable resource, also it can 've used in most engine, most of the time with no changes required. Also it can be used alone or blended with with conventional diesel.

Advantages:

1. It is renewable
2. It can be used in most diesel equipment
3. It can reduce green house gases emisions
4. It is easy to produce

Disadvantage:

1. It contains 10 % less calorific calue than conventional diesel.

If we compare th biodiesel with normal diesel we will see some different. First of all, the warm of work is different, the petro diesel has 129.050 BTU per gallon while the biodiesel has 118.170 BTU per gallon, however biodiesel has less emissions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases