Investigation of Microwave-Assisted Transesterification Reactor of Waste Cooking Oil

Abstract

In this work, the esterification and trans-esterification reactions of waste cooking oil (WCO) with high free fatty acids (FFA) ( ≥ 1% by weight) were investigated. This investigation used a two-step batch process with kinetic based reaction mechanisms and examined potential benefits of combining the conventional Fatty Acid Methyl Ester (FAME) trans-esterification method with microwave technology. Optimization of an acid-catalyzed FAME process to minimize FFA content in the feedstock found that a feed volume ratio of 0.3 L of methanol per liter of WCO, 2% grams of sulfuric acid (H2SO4) per gram of WCO for a reaction time of 200 min at a reaction temperature of 60 °C produced a biodiesel yield of 24%. By comparison, optimization of a base-catalyzed FAME process found that a feed volume ratio of 0.3 L methanol per liter WCO oil, 1 g of potassium hydroxide (KOH) per gram of WCO for a reaction time of 60 min at a reaction temperature of 60 °C produced a biodiesel yield of 93-98%. When microwave irradiation was included, the reaction time for the acid-catalyzed system was 80 min (compared to 200 min) and 10 min for the base-catalyzed system (compared to 60 min). These preliminary results suggest microwave technology merits further investigation for industrial application to biodiesel production.

Department(s)

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering

Research Center/Lab(s)

Center for High Performance Computing Research

Comments

The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Wayne and Gayle Laufer Foundation that made this work possible.

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

0960-1481; 1879-0682

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2020 World Renewable Energy Network (WREN), All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Dec 2020

Share

 
COinS