Production of Biodiesel Via Transesterification of Waste Cooking Oil Catalyzed by Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles
Fath Elrahman Abbas Elsheikh, Salih Mohammed Ahmed Abbaker , Alnwar Omer AbdElrahman Ahmed
كلية الهندسة والتكنولوجيا-جامعة الجزيرة · السودان
Biodiesel has become an important alternative for petroleum fuel; it is non-toxic, biodegradable and has no negative impact to the environment. The objective of this research is to prepare biodiesel from waste cooking oil as the starting material with alcohol (methanol) by transesterification process using two different catalysts; homogenous sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and heterogeneous zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO Nps). In this study, zinc oxide nanoparticles were prepared from zinc acetate dihydrate and sodium hydroxide at room temperature. The obtained white precipitate was dried in oven at 75 oC and characterized by X-Ray diffraction, FTIR and scanning electron microscope which confirm the nanoparticles size (10 nm). The produced biodesel by the esterification process was subjected to analysis to determine some physical properties such as density, kinematics viscosity, API, and comparing them to diesel fuel. Results in the homogeneous sodium hydroxide, the biodiesel was separated in a short time compared to the heterogeneous zinc oxide may be due to sodium cation destabilizes the emulsion. ASTM specifications after the analysis of the samples by homo and hetro respectively was density 0.8811g/ml ,0.8810g/ml at 15 oC, specific gravity 0.88189, 0.88179 , Kinematic viscosity5.488 cSt ,3.861cSt at 40oC and 2.052 cSt ,1.223cSt at 100oCrespectively,API 28.95 ,28.969 and total yield 83% ,85% .It is recommended that some properties which we unable to carry due to unavailable the instrument,like flash point, centane number, cloud point, and pour point to be measured in future, it is also recommended that zinc oxide nanoparticle should be doped with metal ions to enhance separation .