Application of Flying Jet Plasma for Production of Biodiesel Fuel from Wasted Vegetable Oil

Abstract

Biodiesel, a good partial or total substitute for petrodiesel, is a renewable clean burning fuel which can be produced from transesterification of vegetable oils and animal fats with an alcohol in presence of a catalyst. Since the feedstock costs in this process constitutes more than 70 % of the overall cost, use of wasted vegetable oil (i.e. consumed cooking oil) for biodiesel production is a big challenge in terms of cost reduction and environmental impacts. Nonetheless, the content of residues in the wasted vegetable oil, formed during frying, is a major drawback could be faced in this direction. In this research, we applied an unconventional design of flying jet dielectric barrier discharge plasma torch to treat several specimens of wasted cooking oil collected from different resources before transesterification. In other experiments, the jet plasma itself was used to catalyze the reaction process. The examined plasma torch was found more feasible than conventional DBD reactor design in terms of gas and power consumptions. Upon inducting plasma treatment, the transesterification process resulted in higher biodiesel yield, lower reaction time and easier product separation than the conventional path. Upon catalyzing the reaction by the sole jet plasma effect, the biodiesel content of saturated methyl esters was higher than conventional tranesterification. Also, the yield and properties were found within commercial standards.