Amit and Jitendra continued their mission to produce biodiesel from waste vegetable oil. There are two reasons for using waste oil. 1) Edible vegetable is primarily meant for human consumption. Using it for biofuel production could potentially cause elevate food shortage as was seen last year across in the United States and elsewhere, 2) Cost is prohibitive. Biofuel from edible vegetable oil could be double that of biodiesel made from non-edible or waste oil.

Getting used vegetable oil in Bangalore from restaurants are not an easy task as one imagines it to be. Good grade vegetable oil is used by high class restaurants and star hotels. There is an recycle market for this used oil. Recyclers are willing to pay as much as Rs.50/- for a litre of oil. They then refine and sell it back to second tier restaurants and caterers. Once these people are ready to get rid of their used oil the Kabab centers and roadside dhabawallahs buy them at about Rs.25/- a litre. A few years ago waste oil used to cost around Rs.10/-. Prices have since gone up. Amit somehow managed to convince a local Kabab wallah to give a litre of oil for their experiment. At around 10 p.m. last night he collect it from him.

It was then boiled to an optimal temperature and then mixed with the mixture of Methanol and Sodium Hydroxide and kept aside for settling. By evening the biodiesel had settled on top and glycerol at the bottom of the bottle.

Process is simple. Quality of the biodiesel needs to be validated for suitability to purpose. And then, the process needs to be refined to get better results. Would biodiesel from waste oil be as good as it is from fresh vegetable oil?

We will know soon.

--
I Am New,
Krish Murali Eswar.