Biodiesel production from waste cooking oil by using methyl acetate with sodium methylate as a catalyst

Abstract

Biodiesel is a renewable, environmentally friendly, and sustainable source for energy.
However, the biodiesel production cost from virgin or edible oil is very high which makes it
inadequate in the market. Therefore, in the current research work, a green and economically efficient
conventional technique is proposed for the biodiesel production, in which the waste cooking oil is
transesterify in the presence of catalyst sodium methylate and produces biodiesel. In this technique,
methyl acetate is used as a solvent instead of methanol for the transesterification of waste cooking oil.
As a result of the transesterification, bio-diesel and triacetin are produced. Triacetin has the potential
to be used as a fuel additive. The reaction was performed at 50 °C temperature and molar ratio oil to
methyl acetate molar ratio is 1:24 with 0.5 % catalyst by weight with reaction time 3 hours. The
conversion of triglycerides was found to be 95.25% at the specify conditions.