Chemical engineering researchers at the University of Arkansas have investigated supercritical methanol as a method of converting chicken fat into biodiesel fuel.
The new study also successfully converted tall oil fatty acid, a major by-product of the wood-pulping process, into biodiesel at a yield of greater than 90 percent.
“Major oil companies are already examining biodiesel as an alternative to petroleum,” said.
Inexpensive feedstocks
“With the current price of petroleum diesel and the results of this project and others, I think energy producers will think even more seriously about combining petroleum-based diesel with a biodiesel product made out of crude and inexpensive feedstocks.” Under the guidance of R.E. “Buddy” Babcock, professor of chemical engineering, Brent Schulte, a chemical-engineering graduate student subjected low-grade chicken fat and tall oil fatty acids to a chemical process known as supercritical methanol treatment.
One-step process
Supercritical methanol treatment dissolves and causes a reaction between components of a product – in this case, chicken fat and tall oil – by subjecting the product to high temperature and pressure. It is simple one-step process and does not require a catalyst.
Schulte treated chicken fat and tall oil with supercritical methanol and produced biodiesel yields in excess of 89 and 94 percent, respectively.
With chicken fat, maximum yield at 325 degrees Celsius was achieved. The process also produced a respectable yield of 80 percent at 300 degrees Celsius and the same amount of methanol. Previous efforts used conventional methods using a catalyst.
Although successful at producing biodiesel, these conventional methods struggle to be economically feasible due to long reaction times, excessive amounts of methanol required and/or undesired production of soaps during processing.
“The supercritical method hit the free fatty-acid problem head on,” Babcock said. “Because it dissolves the feed material and eliminates the need for the base catalyst, we now do not have the problems with soap formation and loss of yield. The supercritical method actually prefers free fatty acid feedstocks.”
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Source: www.hindu.com, the title edited by Rosinnet