Comprehensive Optimisation of Biodiesel Production Conditions via Supercritical Methanolysis of Waste Cooking Oil

Biodiesel has been established as a promising alternative fuel to petroleum diesel. This study offers a promising energy conversion platform to valorise high acidity waste cooking oil (WCO) into biodiesel in a single-step reaction via supercritical methanol. Carbon dioxide (CO2) has been used as a co-solvent in the reaction with a catalytic effect to enhance the production of biodiesel. This work provides an in-depth assessment of the yield of four fatty acids methyl esters (FAME) from their correspondent triglycerides and fatty acids. The effects of four independent process variables, i.e., methanol to oil (M:O) molar ratio, temperature, pressure, and time, have been in-vestigated using Response Surface Methodology (RSM). Four quadratic models have been de-veloped between process variables and the yield of FAMEs. The statistical validation of the pre-dicted models has been performed using analysis of variance (ANOVA). Numerical optimisation has been employed to predict the optimal conditions for biodiesel production. The predicted op-timal conditions are at 25:1 M:O molar ratio, 254.7 °C, 110 bar within 17 min resulting in 99.2%, 99.3%, 99.13%, and 99.05% of methyl-oleate, methyl-palmitate, methyl-linoleate, and me-thyl-stearate yields, respectively. The predicted optimum conditions have been validated ex-perimentally