Characterization and performance study of biodiesel from waste cooking oil in a direct injection diesel engine

Abstract

Analysis of different samples of Waste Cooking Oil (WCO) to assess their suitability as raw material for the production of biodiesel through transesterification reaction is carried out. The degradation of cooking oil is mainly due to the thermal oxidation reaction and hydrolysis reaction during frying. Acid-alkali and alkali methods are employed for transesterification reaction for producing biodiesel from thermally degraded WCO obtained under controlled laboratory conditions. The work focuses also the determination of catalyst required for the transesterification process and the correlation with acid value and Free Fatty Acid (FFA) content of the WCO. It was established that acid-alkali method gave better physiochemical properties compared to alkali method and B20 blend obtained by this method has shown comparable performance and improved emission characteristics with diesel fuel when tested in a compression ignition (C.I) engine. � 2009 Combustion Institute. All rights reserved.