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the original diesel engine named after
inventor Rudolf diesel actually ran on
vegetable oil changes in the design of
diesel engines over the years required a
different fuel with more energy output
and less gelling and colder weather than
vegetable oil
hence petroleum-based diesel gained
popularity over oil with its performance
and environmental qualities biodiesel is
fast becoming a widely recognized
blending agent for petroleum diesel
biodiesel is a replacement fuel for
diesel engines made out of animal fats
or vegetable oil the advantages of
biodiesel are that it is not derived
from fossil fuels but can be made from
local crops it lowers greenhouse gas
emissions and the production and sale of
biodiesel generates a domestic fuel
economy the University of Idaho is one
of the pioneers of biodiesel research
beginning in 1979 at the University of
Idaho biodiesel education program farm
scale production facility we make
biodiesel from a variety of feedstocks
most of the time we either make
biodiesel from waste vegetable oil
gathered from the kitchens at the
University or we extract the oil
ourselves with our oil seed press to
make biodiesel you remove the impurities
from the fat or oil and change its
viscosity so that it can burn in a
normal diesel engine without mucking up
the fuel lines you do that through a
chemical reaction called
transesterification trans esterification
is the biodiesel making process and is
simply a reaction of the vegetable oil
and alcohol using a catalyst to speed
the reaction let's take a moment to
examine our standard recipe for making
biodiesel this is fuel production
specialist Chad Dunkel your biodiesel
chef for the day
the process is relatively simple
combined a certain amount of alcohol and
catalyst mixture with your feedstock
then heat and agitate for a short period
of time the result is a layer of
biodiesel and a layer of glycerin remove
the glycerin by draining it off the
bottom then use a wash process to remove
contaminants the co-product glycerin has
a lot of other uses like making soap but
that's another topic to ensure that
sound procedures are used and that a
high quality biodiesel is produced we
follow our quality control plan the
quality control plan provides a detailed
description of our process and is
available on our biodiesel education
website first we want to make sure our
feedstock is suitable for making quality
biodiesel the feedstock is filtered
pumped into the reactor dried and tested
for free fatty acids excess water in the
oil will result in serious processing
complications and we want fats or oils
with aloe free fatty acid content waste
oil can be high in free fatty acids
while freshly pressed canola oil for
instance is very low in FFA content and
makes an ideal feedstock for biodiesel
the more FFA in a biodiesel the more
catalyst you must use and the more salt
you'll have to clean out of your
finished biodiesel for safety purposes
the batch size for our both production
is limited to only using 2/3 of the
working volume of our reactor and
generally determined by the amount of
methanol we want to use for our method
of making biodiesel we add methanol at a
6 to 1 molar ratio to the oil and use a
to reaction process batch process
meaning we perform the reaction process
twice the two-step reaction strategy is
used to ensure a complete reaction with
a suitable feedstock in the reactor if
the reactor lid is closed and we
carefully add 80 percent of the methanol
which is extremely toxic and highly
flammable then 80 percent of the sodium
ethoxide which is the catalyst we use
for bulk production the reaction mixture
is then mixed vigorously for at least
one hour at 55 to 60 degrees centigrade
after an hour we turn off the agitation
and let the products sit for at least
two hours
the heavier glycerin settles to the
bottom we drain off as much as we can
add the remaining 20% methanol and
catalyst and agitate again once the
second reaction is finished and the
glycerin has settled we drain off the
glycerin co-product the remaining liquid
is biodiesel however it still has some
excess methanol catalyst and other
impurities mixed in there are several
wash methods but we prefer to use the
water wash method which is repeated
until the fuel is clean the biodiesel is
dried and an antioxidant is added a
series of tests are made on the finished
product to certify it meets the ASTM
biodiesel standards no fuel will be used
in vehicles unless it meets or exceed
the standards once the fuel has been
shown to meet the standards a biocide is
added to the fuel the finished biodiesel
is a high quality fuel ready to use in
any diesel engine visit the website at
biodiesel education org for more
information thank you for watching how
we make biodiesel
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