BIODIESEL PRODUCTION WITH VARIOUS RAW MATERIALS AND PHASE SEPARATION BY ELECTRICAL CONDUCTIVITY

Abstract

Biodiesel is a renewable fuel obtained from the transesterification reaction of oil samples with an alcohol and catalyst and presents itself as an alternative for replacing fossil fuels. For the separation of the phases obtained from the reaction on a laboratory scale, decanters are commonly used, subject to manual operation and operation errors. The objective of this work is to analyze the electrical conductivity of the different phases of the reaction, including biodiesel-glycerin and biodiesel-wash water for different raw materials. As a methodology, transesterification reactions were carried out for different raw materials and later the electrical conductivities were measured through a bench conductivity meter for all phases. As a result, it was observed that for all the raw materials used, biodiesel presented a conductivity value much lower than that of glycerin and washing water, as expected. We can highlight the conductivities for the bovine fat sample, with a difference of more than 38,000 times between the biodiesel and glycerin phases. Therefore, it is concluded that the model used is efficient and can be used for phase separation with different conductivities.