Biodiesel

What is Biodiesel?

Biodiesel is known by the chemical name “Fatty-Acid Methyl Ester”. This fancy name just means that it’s a simple molecule made from vegetable oil. It is a fuel with high energy content and proper viscosity to operate reliably in all diesel vehicles and equipment. Because it’s made from a naturally-growing crop it is basically solar energy in liquid form!
The chemical reaction to make biodiesel is fairly straight forward. Vegetable oil is a ‘triglyceride’ which means three hydrocarbon chains all attached to the same glycerin molecule. It takes a certain amount of catalyst to break off these hydrocarbon chains. In the case of used cooking oils, we must add yet more lye to the reaction to neutralize the “free fatty acids” that have been formed in waste oil. This catalyst is dissolved into methyl alcohol (methanol) with a volume representing 20% of the oil we want to convert. This ‘premix’ is then blended vigorously with the oil to allow complete conversion of the oil. The blending allows the catalyst to break off each hydrocarbon chain, one by one, and bond with a floating methanol molecule to form biodiesel. The stripped glycerin molecules fall to the bottom of the reaction tank where they are removed. Glycerin will represent about 10% of the total mix volume.