Biodiesel production from waste vegetable oils

Biodiesel production is one of the fastest developing renewable energy technologies, and this is driven by the fact that the non–renewable fossil fuel reserves are getting depleted and the use of such fuels results in an increased production of green house gases. In this work, homogeneous trans-esterification method of producing biodiesel was investigated. Experiments were conducted in a batch stirred reactor using waste vegetable oil (WVO) as raw material. A factorial experimental design and response surface methodology (RSM) were used to analyse the effect of the operating parameters on product yield, density and viscosity. The results show that the density the biodiesel from waste vegetable oils was favoured by a combination of low temperature, short reaction time, and moderate catalyst mass. The highest yields were obtained at low temperatures and low catalyst masses, and the biodiesel yield w...