Regeneration of the used cooking oil and converting them into FAMES (fatty acid methyl esters) and glycerol

Soe Wadi

Abstract

The main goal of the research is to establish a green chemistry technique for transesterification reaction to effectively recycle the used cooking oil in Myanmar, converting the used oil into Fatty Acid Methyl Esters (FAMES) and glycerol. The three different samples of the used cooking oil from different restaurants were collected in Yangon, one of the urban cities of Myanmar. Pure pea nut oil was also purchased in one of the local markets in Yangon to serve as a control. All of the used cooking oil were vacuum filtrated before the transesterification reaction. Transesterification reaction was carried out in a form of three different experimental set up. The first experimental method involves heating the oil under the reflux for 30 minutes with 0.025M sodium hydroxide in 45 ml of methanol. Second and third experiment were modified by increasing sodium hydroxide concentration to 0.05M and altering the time under the reflux to 30 minutes and 1 hour 30 mins respectively. Percent yield of glycerol was calculated for each of the experimental set up (Table 1,2 & 3). Infra-red spectroscopy and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectrometry were then carried out on the products on the reaction to check for their purity. Although the third experimental method seem to be having the most percent recovery, more data are needed to support such interpretation and linear regression analysis could be used to determine if changing the concentration of the sodium hydroxide and the time under the reflux has an effect on the percent recovery and purity of the product