The effect of temperature and catalyst concentration of ultrasonic reactor for biodiesel production from waste cooking oil

Biodiesel fuel is a clean burningalternative fuel that comes from 100% renewable resources. It is considered the fuel of the future because it is biodegradable and non-toxic. A process for the production of the ethyl ester (biodiesel) from waste cooking oil for use as a biodiesel fuel has been studied. Biodiesel production process is the transesterification of the used cooking oil with methanol, in the presence of alkali catalyst, to yield the ethyl ester as a product and glycerine as a by-product. These studies have been performed to determine the best conditions for the preparation of the biodiesel based ontemperature effects, catalyst concentration effects and time effect. These processes were using transesterification method with the help of ultrasonic reactor. The experiments were divided into three stages which two variables were fixed and one variable was varied in each stage. For each stage, these procedures were done. They are heating of oil, catalyst preparation, mixing of methanol with catalyst, draining of glycerol, washing of fuel and lastly analyzing the sample. As a result, the best condition that has been determined for maximum biodiesel production were 1.5% catalyst concentration of potassium hydroxides based on weight of waste cooking oil that were used and methanol in ratio 6:1, process were done at temperature 65 0 C and the time is about 60 minutes. These showed that the objective of the experiment has been achieved. Biodiesel yield and moisture content in biodiesel production from waste cooking oil were measured. These processes which using ultrasonic reactor is easy and faster than other biodiesel production process. These were because cavities caused by the ultrasound at the catalyst surface increase the catalyst activity and reduce the activation overpotential loss