Technical aspects of production and analysis of biodiesel from used cooking oil—A review

Abstract The increasing awareness of the depletion of fossil fuel resources and the environmental benefits of biodiesel fuel has made it more attractive in recent times. The cost of biodiesel, however, is the major hurdle to its commercialization in comparison to petroleum-based diesel fuel. The high cost is primarily due to the raw material, mostly neat vegetable oil. Used cooking oil is one of the economical sources for biodiesel production. However, the products formed during frying, can affect the transesterification reaction and the biodiesel properties. This paper attempts to review various technological methods of biodiesel production from used cooking oil. The analytical methods for high quality biodiesel fuel from used cooking oil like GC, TLC, HPLC, GPC and TGA have also been summarized in this paper. In addition, the specifications provided by different countries are presented. The fuel properties of biodiesel fuel from used cooking oil were also reviewed and compared with those of conventional diesel fuel

Pretreatment of Used Cooking Oil for the Preparation of Biodiesel Using Heterogeneous Catalysis

Used cooking oil (UCO) offers a number of benefits for the production of biodiesel because it is a waste material and relatively cheap; however UCOs contain free fatty acids (FFAs) which need to be removed. Esterification can be used to convert the FFAs to biodiesel, and this work has compared two types of heterogeneous catalyst for esterification. An immobilized enzyme, Novozyme 435, was investigated because it has been shown to give a high conversion of FFAs and it has been compared to an ion-exchange resin, Purolite D5081, which was developed for the esterification of UCO for the production of biodiesel. It was found that a conversion of 94% was achieved using Purolite D5081 compared to 90% conversion with Novozyme 435.UK Colloids 2011 - International Colloid and Surface Science Symposium, Jul 04-06, 2011, London, Englan