For more than three decades, transesterification has been considered as the conventional
approach of biodiesel production; Mixing alcohol and oil with a catalyst and using byproduct
such as glycerol for the entire reaction. Quality's product depends on the process,
amount of catalyst, oil being used, ratio of alcohol-to-oil, feedstock, etc. On one hand, the
alkali catalyzed has been considered as
... [Show full abstract] the best process in terms of profit and on the other
hand, the enzymatic as the more promising in terms of its lower consumption of water
and energy. The high cost of raw materials stands to be the reason why biodiesel is not
utilized widely around the world. Hence to overcome this, using lower quality oils, such
as waste cooking oil can be profitable. Moreover, research on waste cooking oil has been
so scarce; the use of palm oil has not been well documented on various literatures. This
article aims at analyzing the entire process of making biodiesel and optimizing the use of
waste cooking oil by investigating interaction effects among each process (temperature,
oil-to-methanol molar ratio and catalyst loading) by using several approaches on the data
gathered from Mentor Co. in Johannesburg. Hence this article focuses on making
biodiesel processes more efficient.
