Design and development of laboratory scale microwave assisted glycerolysis reactor to perform glycerolysis reaction for waste cooking oil (WCO)

• Main Author: Pravin Rao Prakash Rao
• Format: text::Final Year Project
• Language: English US
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: Glycerin; Biodiesel fuels; Oils and fats

Biodiesel from waste cooking oil is a renewable fuel that can be derived from waste cooking oil through transesterification process. However, it is learned that most of the waste cooking oil contains high level of FFA which may lead to saponification during the transesterification process. Moreover, consumption of catalyst in biodiesel production results in higher production cost and separation of liquid state catalyst requires higher time consumption. Therefore, in this research a pre-treatment method with absence of catalyst has been proposed in order to reduce the overall production cost and time consumption. The technical approach was performed in 4 sections, which are (1) design amnd development of laboratory scale microwave assisted glycerolysis reactor (2) preliminary experiment (3) waste cooking oil pre-heating (4) microwave assisted glycerolysis reaction with absence of catalyst. Firstly, few concept designs of reactor were generated and evaluated using Pugh Matrix based on selected design criteria. The best concept design that identified was then developed into a prototype. Besides that, preliminary experiment was conducted to identify the microwave power levels to conduct glycerolysis reaction.