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Abstract

Biodiesel was produced from cooking oil through transesterification using the NaOH
catalyst instead of lipase since it is expensive therefore lowing the cost was also
important as to lowing the amount of carbon dioxide being produced by fossil fuel.
Cooking oil contains high percentage of free fatty acid and the product of biodiesel
which was obtained had a density of 0.88, 14.85g of the product and the mass of
vegetable oil was 100.01g making a %yield of 14.85 and the volume of 16.86 ml.
The test was also done by heating, the cloud point which was 11.5oC and also
comparing the density was 0.88 with the true literature values of biodiesel.

Introduction

Transestarification reaction is the process by which a vegetable oil and animal fat
which have triglyceride molecules are derived to form methyl or ethyl esters of long
chain fatty acids. Transesterification changes both physical and chemical properties
of the vegetable oil into diesel like properties. This is because of the vegetable oil
which is not suitable to use in diesel engine because of the large triglyceride
molecules which are needed to be derived into ethyl esters of long chain fatty acids.
The following figure 1 shows the process of transesterification of triglyceride

High viscosity leads to operational problems because of poor vaporization and


atomization and also carbon deposit due to incomplete combustion.

However there are many efforts to develop and improve vegetable oil properties in
order to approximate the properties of diesel fuels. As it is known that high
viscosity, low volatility and polyunsaturated characters are the mostly associated
problems with crude vegetable oils. These problems can be overcome by four
methods; pyrolysis, dilution with hydrocarbons blending, Microemulsion, and
transesterification. In this experiment the cooking oil was used to create biodiesel
because it is the renewable resource and tansesterification was used to overcome
the high viscosity. The clean burning diesel is an ideal to the replacement that is
reducing the need for petroleum and improving the environment with comparison to
petroleum diesel. And the cost of virgin vegetable oil through transesterification is
higher than that of fossil fuel because of the high raw material cost. This was
minimized by the biofuel cost in this experiment since cooking oil was used as the
feedstock. The catalysts which will be used in this experiment are acids, base and
NaOH since lipase catalysts are much expensive and the usage of biodiesel
production is limited and the quality test will be done in order to check if the
obtained product is indeed biodiesel by burning, heating, cloud test.

Results

TABLE 1: Starting material characteristics

TRAITS OBSERVATION
Colour Gold
Viscosity Very Viscous
Clarity Very Clear

TABLE 2: Titration of WVO in isopropanol with NaOH dissolved in Methanol

RUN 1 RUN 2 RUN 3


INITIAL VOL(ml) 7.59 7.70 7.90
FINAL VOL(ml) 7.70 7.90 8.00
DISPOSED VOL(ml) 0.11 0.20 0.10

AVERAGE = 0.1367 ml

TABLE 3: Titration of WVO in isopropanol with NaOH dissolved in Methanol.

blank RUN 1 RUN 2 RUN 3


INITIAL VOL(ml) 1.51 8.31 14.92 21.83
FINAL VOL(ml) 8.31 15.92 21.83 29.01
DISPOSED VOL(ml) 6.80 7.61 6.91 7.18

AVERAGE = 0.43ml

TABLE 4: Density (g/ml) and Molar Mass (g/mol) of substances

RERERENCE DATA DENSITY (g/ml) Molar Mass (g/mol)


ISOPROPANOL 0.786 60.10
VEGETABLE OIL 0.915 872
GLYCEROL 1.26 92.9
BIODIESEL 0.88 292.2

Calculations of table 2.

Moles = C NaOH x VNaOH

= (0.1M) x (0.1367x10 -3L)

= 1.367 x 10 -5 mol

Mass (NaOH) = mole x Mr

=1.367 x 10 -5 mol x 39.998g.mol-1

= 5.468x10 -4 g for 1 gram of oil

Therefore 100g of vegetable oil = 0.5+ ( 5.468x10 -4 x 100)

=0.55g of the catalyst needed

100g of vegetable oil x 20% = 20 ml of methanol is needed

Mass of biofuel product weighed


Mass % yield of biodiesel = Mass of ( crude) oil sample weighed x100%

14.85 g
= 100 .01 g x100%

= 14.85 %

Amount of biofuel obtained = 14.85g


The cloud point was 11.5oC

Volume = 100.01 ml which is 100.01g of the oil sample

Density = mass/volume

Volume = mass/density

= 14.84g/0.88

= 16.86ml

BURN TEST

This was conducted to see how long the fuel burns against other fuels our biodiesel
was compared with petro diesel and also to see the colour of the flame.

TABLE 5: compared burning time of substances in seconds

Substance Amount Cotton wool Time(seconds)


mass
Biodiesel 2ml 0.1093g 325.16

Heat test

Temperature 22oC-63oC

Blue flame was seen

TABLE 13: Final product traits

SUBSTANCE COLOUR WEIGHT(g) VOLUME(ml DENSITY


)
biodiesel gold 14.84g 16.86 ml 0.88

DISCUSSION

The aim of the experiment was successful since the product was obtained to be
14.85g with the volume of 16.86ml and the yield% was 14.85 which is less than
expected since 85.15 % of the product was a soap. This is because If vegetable oil
contains free fatty acid, it will react with homogenous base catalyst to form soap
and water. Therefore it means more free fatty acid were present which reacted with
the NaOH to form the unwanted soap. And this may have been cause by the wrong
amount of catalyst which was used therefore producing most of the product which
in this case is 85.15% soap. However the test of the product showed that it was
indeed biodiesel which was produced as the flame when it was burned showed the
blue flame which shows the presence of oxygen which improves the combustion,
reducing CO and carbon deposit. The density was 0.88 which was between 0.86-
0.89 therefore showing that indeed it was biodiesel. The cloud point which was
obtained was 11.5oC which is great since it is between -3 to 15 oC. The other ways to
check for quality if indeed it is biodiesel which was obtained just to be sure, this
could have been improved are as follows:

Test 1 check for water

o Place about 30ml of oil on a hot pan and heat. Check for any stem
or bubbles indicating water content

Test 2 acid content check

o Make a titrant by adding 1g of the catalyst used in water

o Add 1ml of sample to a 10ml of isopropyl alcohol

o Add 2-3 drops of pH indicator , Phenopyhalein

o Add the measured amount of titrant to the sample

o Note volume at the observed end-point

Test 3 soap content check

o Add 5ml of the product (biodiesel )to 50ml of isopropyl alcohol

o Add 10-15 drops of bromophenol blue

o Titrate with HCl until the solution has a yellow colour

o Observe the volume of the titrant used and calculate the amount of
soap

However the tests done showed indeed that the product was biodiesel as the test
quality

Conclusion

The product obtained was 14.85g, the volume of 16.86 ml, the mass of vegetable
oil(crude oil) was 100.01g, the density was 0.88 and the yield% was 14.85. The test
which was done showed that indeed it was biodiesel which was produced in this
experiment and therefore the aim of this experiment was successful even though
small amount of biodiesel was obtained because most of it was turned into soap
because of the cataylst.

References

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