SHOWCASE

Paper and Poster presentation competition

ABSTRACT

BIOFUELS PRODUCTION FROM WASTE VEGETABLE OIL

1Debaleena Mukherjee

OBJECTIVE
Biofuels have piqued interest of many due to depleting fossil fuels in the recent times. Biodiesel is an
effective alternative to conventional fuels. Enormous quantities of waste vegetable oil is generated
from the commercial food industry. This abstract proposes to produce biodiesel from waste vegetable
oils from restaurants using a processes such as hydrogenation and Fluid catalytic cracking.

PROCEDURE
Used cooking oil is first let to settle for a day to remove any kinds of solid materials suspended. It is
also filtered off smaller solids using a sieve. The oil is then heated to around 120 degrees Farenheit to
remove water. This oil is then sent to a catalytic cracking unit with zeolites (Ni and Mo) as catalyst.
The cracked products are collected in another segment where distillation occurs and the products are
seperated. The cracked fuel is collected and is tested for in an engine to ensure the same effect as that
of diesel. However, to prove the possibility of the above process, we use pumice stone or clay stone as
the porous catalyst while performing cracking in the laboratory.

RESULTS
Biodiesel obtained from this series of process is seen to contain 4 to 8 carbons in its chain, indicating
the effectiveness of the cracking and is seen to produce the same effect as that of petroleum in
automobile engines. Biodiesel produced in this process causes less emissions and release less pollutants
on fuel combustion. However, in producing the above biodiesel, fluid catalytic cracking is used as it is
way more efficient than transesterification process. When the above experiment is conducted in the lab,
the cracked hydrocarbon products is tested with various colour changing reagents to check for presence
of small chain hydrocrabons like the ones present in gasoline.

USEFULNESS OF THE ABOVE PROCESS

With conventional fuels depleting with days passing by, it becomes extremely important to come up
with alternate fuels that are not just efficient but also eco friendly. Through this process, lots of oil that
goes into waste in restaurants can be processed to produce something useful in a lot of ways. Apart
from these, the process of transesterification can be replaced by fluid catalytic cracking, which is a way
more versatile method employed in the petroleum industry now. Thus, production of biodiesel from
waste cooking oil is useful in not one, but many ways.