Non-Edible Oil Biodiesel Production via Microwave Irradiation Technologies Using Waste-Heterogeneous Catalyst Derived From Natural Calcium Oxide

Biodiesel

Biodiesel is an alternative fuel that can be used for conventional diesel engines made from a very wide range of feedstock that have been chemically transformed into alkyl esters with the aid of alcohol and with or without catalyst. Methanol is the most preferred alcohol compared to ethanol due to its chemical and physical advantages such as high volatility, better conversion and simpler to find (Idris, 2016).

Most of the biodiesel fuel manufactured from renewable, non-petroleum based sources range from animal fats to vegetable oils, algae and waste vegetable oils (Demirbas, 2017). In addition, the properties of these feedstocks vary widely from those of petroleum diesel fuel especially in the areas of viscosity, atomization and the coking of engine components. It is reported that most of the plant oils have viscosities that can be as much as 20 times higher than that of fossil fuel. This problem can be overcome by adapting the engine to the fuel or vice versa.

The most critical challenge encountered by biodiesel producer is to minimizing the cost of biodiesel production which is depending on the raw materials such as alcohol, oil feedstocks and catalyst as a booster (Zamberi et al., 2011). Utilizing edible vegetable oil as potential biodiesel feedstocks for example soybean oil in the United States and palm oil in the Southeast Asia has significantly increase because of its abundant agricultural production (Abbaszaadeh et al., 2012). However, these type of feedstocks has experienced several disadvantages over the past few years such as increases in feedstock price, low heating value and higher NOx emission compare to conventional diesel fuel (Ashraful et al., 2014). In order to overcome all these associated problems with edible oil, non-edible oil was introduced as an effective way to boost up the biodiesel production industries.