You could use regular diesel instead of toluene as a solvent - You would not have to distill off solvent… and also some addition of regular diesel (10-40%) is much desirable from the engine POV (pumps, injectors…) first step - oil dehydration is also redundant - this oil is anhydrous - transparent… cacl2 or similar will definetely not make it dryer… dehydration after washing is also not necessary - prolonged , low rpm stirring with water (2hrs or so) will do the work - You will end with clear liquid which means that water content is really low… this thing can be dehydrated just by passing through column filled with relatively small portion of dry 4A molecular sieves to the second container
I think the soot is mainly from not reaching the correct stoichiometric combustion ratio. If you can atomize the biodiesel it should burn without any soot. Great video! :)
Thanks- great video. I made biodiesel a year ago just to try it and I ended up with a lot of soap and biodiesel, but nothing I would risk putting in my engine.
During reaction it is important to keep all amount of moisture away...preferably by using sodium hydroxide in. When moisture is present you will get soap in your final product.
Transesterification is such a neat reaction. I've used it once to make methyl laurate from cocos fat. I used sodium metal and methanol to generate the NaOMe without the hassle of dealing with water.
Cool science, though given the location of the majority of world sunflower oil production at the moment, and alternative feedstock would probably be necessary :/
That's true, but sunflower oil is not really used for biodiesel production in general, i used it because at the time of buying it was the cheapest. From what i've read, rapeseed oil seems the most common for biodiesel production.
Biodiesel can be made from fat from rendering plant. I worked few months in company using this feedstock for biodiesel production. Final product needs to be vacuum distilled in the end.
the sooth comes from incomplete burn, probably caused by low temperature air and because of lack of oxigen. it is 'pure carbon' that had not enough air and temperature to combine with oxigen. you probable get less sooth if burnt in a 'storm' kerosen lamp, either hor or cold blasted, (the flat wick and pre-heatin of the air helps a lot) or an argand lamp (tubular wick) (petroleum industry worker ;) )
@@cielvague sooth... oxigen... kerosen... Then there is the entire position that is incorrect. Soot, is the result of a rich fuel to air ratio condition. Air temperature is not relevant.
I made bio diesel using coconut oil thinking that the shorter chain fatty acids would result in a much easier to burn fuel due to higher vapour pressure and yes it worked. It burnt very easily. I didn't use any toluene but used salt water which separated the soap quite well and the separated biodiesel was washed with water and dried using anhy. CaCl². Fun fact - the biodiesel smelled like fake pineapple scent due to esters of some fatty acids (maybe the esters of 7-8 carbon chain acids are responsible which are present in coconut oil)
Also i used potassium hydroxide as the catalyst which i think made it easier for the soaps to be separated. The flames were almost soot free and burnt pretty clean.
@@mattbanks3517 many years ago I was watched a RU-vid video where this guy claimed it was cost effective at home to use electricity to make pyrolysis oil from plastic as diesel fuel. The video was taken down. I found out it was because posting the video got him a $25,000 fine for putting untaxed fuel in his commercial vehicle and driving it on the highway. Even Lawyers don't know All the laws, and laws are written ambiguous so they can be twisted and reinterpreted such anyone can be guilty of anything, so privacy is best, just act without selfish greed and avoid hurting others and don't talk to anyone about what you do.
When i was shopping recently i saw the a litre of sunflower oil now costs €5. A litre of Diesel costs ~€2. What do i need to do to make the Diesel compatible with my salad? ;-)
Sunflower oil consists roughly 3/4 of biodiesel by volume (simple math: it makes 3 moles of biodiesel to 1 mole of glycerine, so 3/4), so, without all other things you put into it... yeah, it's worth it only when you have access to cheaper than dirt oil (like some dudes who make it from used deep fryer oil).
The sooty flame is because of the low oxygen content, not hydrogen. In an engine, with enough air (containing oxygen) added, it won't burn making so much soot.
Can glycerol be decomposed into methanol? It would be cool to be able to feed the waste glycerol back into the reaction as methanol and it kind of seems like it's something that should be dooable, but I'm no chemist
Wouldn't acid catalysis be preferable? 1) Conversion of FFA in the oil to the FAME (slight, likely insignificant benefit) and 2) Less likely to have soap in workup, so may avoid need for FAME solvent, so less solvent waste, no concentration needed, and smaller volume
You can't really say that diesel contains lots of different compounds but biodiesel only contains one. They both contain only one group of compounds, but lots of different individual compounds. Diesel contains lots of different hydrocarbons, while biodiesel contains lots of different methyl esters of lots of different fatty acids.
thanks for the video, what is the proportion for ethanol usage instead of methanol? I'm in Ukraine, and I have cheap sunflower oil and ethanol so would like to make some biofuel. But no luck for now.
Ethyl esters is much more difficult, you require anhydrous ethanol which cannot be obtained by distillation (ethanol forms an azeotrope with water). Methanol is quite cheap industrially, so nobody bothers using ethanol.
Water and methanol have approximately the same pKa, so a 1:1 equilibrium could be expected. As the methoxide is consumed, the catalyst OH- is regenerated and reacts with methanol again to form methoxide
Using fresh virgin oil is pure waste, old chip pan oil is good as some of it has has turned to peroxides which helps the combustion, and would be disposed of anyway.
I'm writing to you from the future. Due to russian war in Ukraine you better save your sunflower oil as diesel prices will look like a joke comparing to sunflower oil prices next autumn.
Figured there would be a resurgence of bio fuels. Might have to open my shop up again. Start tearing down engines after individuals play around with this tomfoolery. Wait till they see the price of common rail injection components. They can't drive enough miles and dodge enough road taxes to ever recover the cost of the repair.
Most common rail systems are ok with a little bit of it, my car can take up to 5% in the fuel according to the manufacturer. When I made some biodiesel as an experiment I made sure it was super clean then added it to my tank at 2% on each fillup. Took a while to use the full 4L I'd produced. I also tried adding a small quantity to petrol for a 2T outboard alongside the 50:1 premix of TC-W3 oil, but found it very unsatisfactory in that regard. Most of the biodiesel didn't burn and instead came out the exhaust as smoke. On the plus side, the 'vegetable' smell of the smoke did mask some of the usual 2T exhaust odor. Mixing with petrol in an air-cooled 4 stroke engine (my home-made 'webster' engine) had similar results, lots of vegetable smelling smoke out the exhaust, though on the plus side it did seem to serve OK as cylinder lubricant in that case (the engine has an open crank and the cylinder is usually drip fed oil). Fun side-note, biodiesel reacts strangely to brass or bronze parts if left in contact for long periods, creating weird greenish precipitates which I can only assume to be copper salts of fatty acids. I found this out as part of another experiment building a miniature diesel fuel injector. So anyone running a vintage diesel engine should be very wary of biofuel, lest they have to disassemble and clean their entire fuel system.
