INTERACTIVE WEBSITE FOR BIOFUELS
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Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Conversion of Oil to Bio - Diesel Fuels
The process of converting oil into Biodiesel is known as Transesterification. Transesterification is a chemical reaction between the fats or oils with an alcohol, in the presence of a catalyst to form an ester (the Biodiesel) and the glycerol (the by – product). The above is done by mixing methanol with sodium hydroxide, the catalyst to form sodium methoxide. This resulting liquid is then mixed with the oil. During the process, the mixture will be left to settle so that the glycerine (the by-product) and the biodiesel can be separated into two different layers. In figure 1, the glycerine is the layer at the bottom of the inverted bottle. The glycerine is then filtered out from the biodiesel as seen in Figure 2. After the glycerine is removed, the mixture is to be washed by water a few times (see Figure 3) so that the water soluble methanol and sodium hydroxide residual (the milky layer as seen in Figure 4) can be removed from the final product. |
