Heterogeneous Catalysis for Biodiesel Production under Ultrasonication: A Research Project

Nowadays scientists search for alternative fuels as fossil fuel depletion, environmental concerns, and fossil fuels hike in the price. Reduction in biodiesel production costs up to 60–90% with the utilization of waste cooking oil. Biodiesel is a low emissions diesel substitute fuel made from waste lipids, renewable resources, and animal fats. The most common way to produce biodiesel is through transesterification,using heterogeneous and homogeneous catalyst/transesterification. Meanwhile, the effect of novel processes significantly influenced the final conversion, yield, and in particular, the quality of products such as membrane reactor, reactive distillation column, reactive absorption, ultrasonic, and microwave irradiation. This research work mainly focuses on the production of biodiesel fuel using an ultrasonic process. Ultrasonic, a non-conventional process technique was applied to directly convert waste cooking oil into biodiesel in a single step. Results obtained from the experiments carried out to produce Biodiesel using Ultrasound and heterogeneous catalysis clearly signifies that it is an efficient method for the production of biodiesel in shorter times with higher yield.