Preparation of biodiesel from waste cooking oil and study the effect on performance of diesel engine.

The fuel prices are sky rocketing day by day and fossil fuel are at verge of depletion in coming few decades. Since our country is not self-dependent in energy source and every year huge amount is spent in fulfilling energy demands. So, we should focus on finding new alternative source of energy and government have taken initiatives and invested money in the research and development in the field of non conventional source of energy like solar, wind, biogas, biomass, biodiesel etc. The project focuses on the production of biodiesel from waste cooking oil (which will obtained from restaurants, hotels etc.) also the production of biodiesel should be affordable and consumes less production cost as well as it should be ecofriendly Biodiesel is prepared from the trans-esterification process which involves two steps- acidic esterification in which oil, solution of sulphuric acid and methanol is heated and in second step, trans-esterification reaction is carried out. After completion of reaction it is kept for settling and glycerol is separated from biodiesel. The prepared biodiesel is then test for some important properties of fuel like calorific value, viscosity, and density. Comparison of the optimum conditions of alkaline-catalyzed transesterification process for biodiesel production from pure sunflower cooking oil (PSCO) and waste sunflower cooking oil (WSCO) through transesterification process using alkaline catalysts. To obtain a high quality biodiesel fuel that comply the specification of standard methods (ASTM D 6751 & EN 14214), some important variables such as volumetric ratio, types of reactants and catalytic activities were selected. The highest approximately 99.5% biodiesel yield acquired under optimum conditions of 1:6 volumetric oil-to-methanol ratio, 1% KOH catalyst at 40oC reaction temperature and 320 rpm stirring speed. Result showed that the biodiesel production from PSCO and WSCO exhibited no considerable differences. The research demonstrated that biodiesel obtained under optimum conditions from PSCO & WSCO was of good quality and could be used as a diesel fuel which considered as renewable energy and environmental recycling process from waste oil after frying. Biodiesel fuel is a logical alternative to diesel fuel since it is renewable, environmentally friendly, and economically advantageous. Biodiesel is superior to conventional diesel in terms of its sulphur content, aromatic content and flash point. It is essentially sulphur free and non-aromatic while conventional diesel can contain up to 500 ppm SO2 and 20-40 wt% aromatic compounds. These advantages could be a key solution to reduce the problem of urban pollution since transport sector is an important contributor of the total gas emissions. Amongst vehicle fuels, diesel is dominant for black smoke particulate together with SO2 emissions and contributes to a one third of the total transport generated greenhouse gas emissions (31). According to Utlu and Kocak (42) , there was on average of a decrease of 14% for CO2, 17.1% for CO and 22.5% for smoke density when using biodiesel. Keyword: Biodiesel, waste cooking oil, soya-bean oil, engine performance, emission parameters, efficiency, properties of biodiesel etc.