Biodiesel production from vegetable oil and waste animal fats in a pilot plant

• Published in: Waste management (Elmsford) 2014-11, Vol.34 (11), p.2146-2154
• Main Authors: Alptekin, Ertan, Canakci, Mustafa, Sanli, Huseyin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Animal fat; Animals; Applied sciences; Biodiesel; Biodiesel cost; Biofuels - analysis; Catalysis; Catalysts; Chicken fat; Chickens; Corn oil; Esters; Exact sciences and technology; Fats - metabolism; Fleshing oil; Food Handling; Fuels; Methanol - metabolism; Methyl alcohol; Other wastes and particular components of wastes; Pilot plant; Pilot Projects; Plant Oils - metabolism; Pollution; Pretreatment; Sulfuric Acids - metabolism; Waste Management - methods; Wastes; Zea mays - chemistry
• ISSN: 0956-053X; 1879-2456
• DOI: 10.1016/j.wasman.2014.07.019

•Waste animal fats are converted to their methyl esters in a biodiesel pilot plant.•Unique processes are not required to scale up from laboratory to pilot plant scale.•Fuel properties of animal fat and corn oil methyl esters are close to each other.•CFPP and sulfur content of animal fat esters are higher compared to COME.•The cost of COME was higher than those of CFME and FOME. In this study, corn oil as vegetable oil, chicken fat and fleshing oil as animal fats were used to produce methyl ester in a biodiesel pilot plant. The FFA level of the corn oil was below 1% while those of animal fats were too high to produce biodiesel via base catalyst. Therefore, it was needed to perform pretreatment reaction for the animal fats. For this aim, sulfuric acid was used as catalyst and methanol was used as alcohol in the pretreatment reactions. After reducing the FFA level of the animal fats to less than 1%, the transesterification reaction was completed with alkaline catalyst. Due to low FFA content of corn oil, it was directly subjected to transesterification. Potassium hydroxide was used as catalyst and methanol was used as alcohol for transesterification reactions. The fuel properties of methyl esters produced in the biodiesel pilot plant were characterized and compared to EN 14214 and ASTM D6751 biodiesel standards. According to the results, ester yield values of animal fat methyl esters were slightly lower than that of the corn oil methyl ester (COME). The production cost of COME was higher than those of animal fat methyl esters due to being high cost biodiesel feedstock. The fuel properties of produced methyl esters were close to each other. Especially, the sulfur content and cold flow properties of the COME were lower than those of animal fat methyl esters. The measured fuel properties of all produced methyl esters met ASTM D6751 (S500) biodiesel fuel standards.