The first comprehensive life‐cycle assessment (LCA) for soybean biodiesel produced in the U.S. was completed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in 1998, and the energy inventory for this analysis was updated in 2009 using 2002 data. The continual adoption of new technologies in farming, soybean processing, and for biodiesel conversion affects the life‐cycle energy use over time,...

BACKGROUND Biodiesel is a diesel fuel alternative that has shown potential of becoming a commercially accepted part of the United States' energy infrastructure. In November 2004, the signing of the Jobs Creation Bill HR 4520 marked an important turning point for the future production of biodiesel in the United States because it offers a federal excise tax credit. By the end of 2005, industry pr...

Biodiesel is a clean burning alternative renewable fuel made from natural renewable sources. It is defined as mono-alkyl esters of long chain fatty acids derived from vegetable oils or animal fats, which conform to ASTM specifications for use in diesel engines. Biodiesel present a very promising alternative fuel to diesel oil and properties of this oil offer the advantage of immediate substitut...

Engineering students in a one-semester organic chemistry laboratory course prepared biodiesel by using either microwave or conventional heating in a discovery-based experiment. The laboratory design was to show improvement in student awareness about the use of microwave heating in organic synthesis in general, and specifically in the preparation of biodiesel. The students were polled before and...

Renewable biofuels are needed to displace petroleum-derived transport fuels, which contribute to global warming and are of limited availability. Biodiesel and bioethanol are the two potential renewable fuels that have attracted the most attention. As demonstrated here, biodiesel and bioethanol produced from agricultural crops using existing methods cannot sustainably replace fossil-based transp...

The feedstock used in our experiment for the production of biodiesel was Yellow Grease. The whole experiment was divided into two parts: Production and Testing. Production involves Transesterification of free fatty acids in yellow grease to form yellow grease alkyl esters. The process of testing involved calculation of the physio – chemical properties, acid value, density, kinematics viscosity ...

The conversion of biomass to energy (also called bio energy) encompasses a wide range of different types and sources of biomass, conversion options, end user applicationsand infrastructure requirements. Mustard oil biodiesel performed very well in vehicles. Fuel consumption increased compared to fossil diesel because biodiesel has slightly less energy per gallon than diesel fuel. The fuel filte...

This study is based on optimizing the experimental conditions of biodiesel production by base-catalyzed transesterification using waste cooking oil (WCO). In this study, the key parameters varied were methanol (20, 25, 30, 35, and 40%), sodium hydroxide (0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 0.9 and 1.0g), reaction time (40, 60, 90, 100 and 120 minutes) and reaction temperature (50, 52, 55, 58, and 60 C). Maximum bio...

This work presents an analysis about microreactors of different geometries for the biodiesel synthesis. The microreactors were made by a polymeric substrate with the photolithography technique. Simulations were made using the computational fluid dynamics software ANSYS-CFX. They show the flow behavior through the microchannels. Experiments were performed to produce biodiesel, with syringe pumps...

Biodiesel is an alternative diesel fuel consisting of the alkyl monoesters of fatty acids from vegetable oils or animal fats. Currently, most biodiesel is made from soybean oil, methanol, and an alkaline catalyst. However, there are large amounts of fats and oils that are unsuitable for human consumption that could be converted to biodiesel at lower cost. The problem with processing these waste...