A Conparative Study of Biodiesel Purification with Magnesium Silicate and Water

Abstract

It is not justifiable to use excess of water to purify biodiesel only because it is the " most economical" method. Actually it is one of the problems in the biodiesel production industry an adequate purification method; the most commonly used one is the water washing. Currently, there is considerable interest in the biodiesel purification with other solid materials such as synthetic magnesium silicate, which is an effective absorbent to remove impurities. The two methods discussed here have been tested in similar conditions of temperature, time and concentration of reactants. It was found that it is very important to remove the remaining methanol to avoid saturation of the absorbent. The analysis concluded that residues of glycerol and soap content in the two processes are similar and efficient enough and did not find many differences. The purity requirements and analysis of biodiesel were based on the American standard ASTM D6751.

Biodiesel Production from Palm Oil, Its By-Products, and Mill Effluent: A Review

“…One mole of triglyceride reacts with three moles of alcohol to produce three moles of mono-alkyl ester and one mole of glycerol. To improve the rate of reaction and biodiesel yield, a catalyst is usually added with excess alcohol, which shifts the equilibrium to the product side since the reaction is reversible [1,9,10]. Traditionally, the transesterification process utilises solvents including ethanol or methanol and homogeneous catalysts such as KOH, NaOH, and H 2 SO 4 [11][12][13].…”

Sustainable Biodiesel Production by Transesterification of Waste Cooking Oil and Recycling of Wastewater Rich in Glycerol as a Feed to Microalgae

“…Other literature data were taken into consideration, as those reported in [37] for the transesterification of sunflower oil with ethanol and NaOH as the catalyst and those presented in [38] for sunflower methanolysis catalyzed by potassium hydroxide but parameters of [30] showed the best fit with our experimental data.…”

“…There are generally two accepted methods for purifying biodiesel: wet and dry. The most traditional one is wet cleaning and it is widely used to remove contaminants as alcohol in excess, catalyst, and soap [30]. However, the water-washing process has several disadvantages, such as yield loss in the effluent, and high soap levels that cause emulsification [31].…”

Comparative analysis of various waste cooking oils for esterification and transesterification processes to produce biodiesel

“…Wet wash and dry wash methods were applied to obtain a purified product. In wet wash, water was heated at 60°C to wash the biodiesel until a clearer product layer was obtained, then the purified layer was dried by heating at 100°C to remove water content (22). On the other hand, for dry washing silica and Amberlite were used as adsorbents to remove all the contaminants.…”