• Journal of the Korean Applied Science and Technology
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.683-693
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• 2017

Transport biofuels have been recognized as a promising means to resolve the following issues like global warming, oil depletion and environmental pollutions. Among various biofuels, biodiesel has several advantages such as less emission of air pollutants and higher cetane values compared to diesel oil. Demand for biodiesel in Korea is increasing that leads to higher dependence on the imported feedstocks. Therefore, it is important to utilize the waste materials collected domestically for biodiesel production. Food waste oil collected in waste treatment facility has not been used for biodiesel production due to high free fatty contents in the oil. In this work, biodiesel conversion of food waste oil by Amberlyst 15 was studied. Synthetic and actual food waste oils have been used in the study. First, the effects of the major operating parameters including reaction temperature, methanol to oil molar ratio and catalyst loading on the conversion rates and yields were determined with synthetic waste oil. Kinetic modelling work was also done to determine the activation energy of the reaction. From the work, optimization reaction conditions were determined to be 383K, 1: 26.1 for methanol molar ratio to oil, 10 wt.% for catalyst loading and 360 min for reaction time. Activation energy of the reaction is determined to be 29.75 kJ/mol, lower than those reported in the previous works. So the solid catalyst, Amberlyst 15, was more efficient for esterification than the solid catalysts employed in the other works. Agitation rates have the negligible effects on the conversion rates and yields. With the identified optimization conditions, conversion of the actual food waste oil was also carried out. The esterification yield of actual food waste oil in 60 min was 13% lower than that of synthetic waste oil but the final yields in 240 min were similar each other, 98.12% for synthetic oil and 97.62% for actual waste oil.