It's hot out there today, reading around 85 degrees Fahrenheit in Boston. So literally, it's a pretty good day to run biodiesel (or straight vegetable oil if you're adventurous).
Our production has gone on hold this week, since we are in the process of smaller test batches. While the biodiesel process is pretty straightforward and well-defined, there are some discrepancies over how much catalyst to use. In our lab, we use KOH (potassium hydroxide). The general idea is that after you perform a titration to find how much KOH you need to neutralize the free fatty acids. The reaction also requires KOH as a catalyst. To determine the amount of KOH you must add to methanol to make methoxide, you add a certain number to the titration number. It is this number we are testing. For our smaller experiments, we are processing 4 1L batches of biodiesel using waste vegetable oil from the student center here on MIT's campus. I performed the titrations for this WVO last week, getting values of 7.5, 7.5, and 8 in the three separate titrations. We are then adding 5, 7, 9, and 11 to get four different batches of methoxide. Since we are only using 1L of WVO, these numbers simply convert to grams of KOH. We will compare the results of these batches by measuring the amount that of glycerol that each batch creates, as well as performing a 225/25 test.
I would like to give a special thanks to Joshua Middaugh and Jeffry Mo for giving me access to their fume hood, Niamh Kelly and the EHS Office at MIT for buying us our first Erlenmeyer flasks, and lastly to Bob, Lab Manager with EHS, for donating 250mL, 500mL, and 1000mL graduated cylinders.
For a more detailed Procedure and list of Materials, see here.
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