Acid-catalyzed preparation of biodiesel from waste vegetable oil: An experiment for the undergraduate organic chemistry laboratory

摘要

This laboratory exercise produces usable biodiesel in satisfactory yield and the laboratory exercise including viscosity and lammability tests can be carried out in about 2.5 h. The exercise is popular with students owing to the current interest in producing fuel from biomass. This procedure serves to demonstrate the concept of transesterification as well as Fischer esterification. The viscosity and flammability tests are simple ways to distinguish biodiesel from vegetable oil and serve to reinforce the importance of physical properties of motor fuels. While the cost of 1-propanol versus ethanol or methanol as well as the energy needed to heat the mixture under reflux may make this particular procedure unsuitable for large-scale production of biodiesel, the procedure does serve to demonstrate important concepts in the organic laboratory.