We are trying to produce bio diesel from waste vegetable oil.
Yes indeed.....however ethanol is better option as it can be prepared through bio based processes...methanol is more preferred due to easy availability, lower cost.
Methanol also produces a more stable product as ethanol is very hydrophylic. However, I will be doing some experimetns soon to see how well ethanol can work on producing biodiesel from microalgae.
We can produce FAEE, but water content should be in a small amount via an alkoxide catalyst.
Dear Bharadwaj
Your question is good. we can produce diesel like hydrocarbon fuels without using methanol or any alcohol. Nowadays most of the people are following producing Biodiesel by transesterification process. There are some another processes such as Hydrotreatment, hydrodeoxygenation, catalytic deoxygenation for producing diesel like hydrocarbon fuels. In these processes, any kind of alcohol does not need to apply.
From those methods, we can obtained good quality of diesel fuels when compared to Biodiesel (Transesterification process.) these methods can help to producing Bio-jet fuel also. More reports are available related to this technology. So please refer well.
Of Course Yes, Biodiesel can be produced by the reaction of vegetable oil with any alkyl source such as methanol, ethanol, dimethyl carbonate, methyl acetate, ethyl acetate.... etc.
In general, Biodiesel is obtained first as FAME via :
1. Transesterification of TGs of vegetable oils of low FFAs (alkaline catalyzed).
2. Esterification of FFAs of High FFAs vegetable oils (acid catalyzed).
3. Combination of 1 & 2 (two types of catalysts).
Synthesis from methanol follows method 1 (aforesaid), and this is the most feasible method and the widely used in industry.
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