Waste Cooking Oil

Waste cooking oil (WCO) refers to the oil-based substance that consists vegetable or animal
that has been used in cooking or food preparation which includes the food preparation
process in fast food outlets, restaurants and even in household. Such oil is no longer suitable
for human consumption due to oxidation and pollution with small food part. In this decade,
large amount of WCO is generated annually from every country worldwide is huge and
varies accordingly to the amount of edible oil consumed. Estimately, a total of more than 15
million tons of WCO is generated from selected countries in the world as shown in Table
(Kennedy & Ahamad, 2007).

Table : Amount of waste cooking oil produced from various countries

Country Amount (million tons per year)
China 4.5
Malaysia 0.5
United States 10.0
Taiwan 0.07
Europe 0.7-1.0
Japan 0.45-0.57

WCO cannot be discharged directly into the wastewater or sewage as it can clog the
collection pipes that might lead to overflow of sanitary sewer. Furthermore, the high content
of oil in WCO , it can coat the activated sludge in the wastewater facility that can prevent the
oxygen transfer for waste degradation.

As profligate and even useless as it sounds, WCO can be a great feedstock for biodiesel (Gui,
Lee, & Bhatia, 2008) . WCO can come from various source such as palm, sunflower,
rapeseed, or any other oil that was originally used for the food preparation. WCO is
composed of the esters of glycerol and fatty acids, also called triglycerides. In vegetable oils,
the concentrations of unsaturated fatty acids which consists at least one C-C doubled bonds
are higher than in animal fats. These oils, when undergone the food preparation processes
including frying there will be changes in terms of the physical and chemical characteristics
(Van Gerpen, 2005). Frying is the most frequent cooking method as it enhance and gives a
better taste to the food (Canakci, 2007).

Due to economical factor, frying is conducted in the same oil for a few times under a high
temperature in the presence of oxygen and light thus it can cause some major changes to the
oil including physical changes . Some of the physical changes involved including makes the
colour become more darker, increase in viscosity, increase specific heat, and a higher
tendency to generate foam (Demirbas, 2009). These features reduce the capability to purify it
thus sacrificing its economic viability. The physical and chemical properties of WCO can
vary based on its original feedstock used.

Compare to the unused oil, the triglyceride in the WCO breaks down during the cooking
process into free fatty acid, leading to higher amount of free fatty acid contents in WCO. The
oxidation and polymerization process that occurs during the cooking and frying process
increase the vascosity and the saponification number in WCO (César, Werderits, de Oliveira
Saraiva, & Guabiroba, 2017).

Biodiesel with higher viscosity is not much favoured as it will ultimately damage and cause
casualty to the fuel injector in the engine of cars as it will cause an incomplete combustion
subsequently will accumulate unburned deposites in the engine (Wei, Cheung, & Ning,
2017). WCO also contains a higher amount of water because the transferation of heat and
mass between the food and oil during frying and cooking process. The high water and FFA
content along with the high saponification number of WCO can cause saponification
reactions during transesterification process. This reaction subsequently will curtailing the
production yield of biodiesel and cause an increment of utilized catalysed. Alternatively, a
suitable transesterification method should be used in achieving an optimum biodiesel
production yield at a viable cost (Buffi et al., 2017). Amidst the various types of oils that are
being used for biodiesel production, palm oil, sunflower oil and olive oil are the most
common ones used in frying and cooking. Thereupon, the fatty acids mainly present in these
oils (i.e. stearic acid, palmitic, and oleic acids) are major fatty acids in WCO (Banerjee, Dey,
Talukdar, & Chandra Kalita, 2014). These fatty acids have different numbers of carbon chain
lengths that need to be modify to become a shorter carbon chain to yield biodiesel through
transesterification method.