CHARACTERIZING OF THE RAW MATERIALS AND UTILITIES FOR THE LABORATORY-SCALE BIODIESEL PRODUCTION

Abstract: Nowadays it is a well known fact that biodiesel is a renewable resource based fuel for use in diesel engines. From the most of the studies referred in the specialized literature it can be made from various oils including corn, soybean, canola, cottonseed, peanut, etc. and from animal fats, but as usually it has a more scientific term as Fatty Acid MethylEster (FAME). The oils and fats contain triglycerides that are chemically converted into FAME by a process called “transesterification” and the fuel produced is more environmentally friendly than petroleum diesel. Raw materials for the biodiesel production can be as follows: vegetable oils, grasses from the animal wastes and recycled; but also the waste cooking oils which has been main objective of our study. These materials all have considerable content of the triglycerides, free organic fatty acids, and other ingredients as contaminants of them, strongly depended from the way of their pretreatment before delivery. We have considered mains olive, wheat oil, sunflower oil, soya oil, cotton oil, palm oil; as well as waste cooking oil from restaurants and fast food bars, caw and pig grease, etc. Since biodiesel is an ester of the fatty acids it is needed also a specific catalyst for the facilitating the starting of the transesterification process, and we have used both basic and acidic chemically content of it. Also, for the biodiesel production there are necessary some utilityes and auxiliary materials , which we have characterizing them all for the study performed in the laboratory scale. The characteristics of all the raw and other needed materials we have shown in the full version of our paper.