Biodiesel-A How to

This a how-to biodiesel, first things first, the process described here is the one I did, I improvised where I needed and always had supervision
The products you'll use can be quite dangerous so use safety gear!!!! While I'm no PhD on chemistry anyone can do this I'm just showing you, this only wants to spark curiosity out of you so you get involved too!

The process to convert regular oil to biodiesel is called a transesterification, you'll need the next things:

-NaOH which will be the catalyst
-CH3-OH
-vegetable oil
-If you can sort it out a processor

You'll need to know that every chemical used should be 99%+pure. Referring to the catalyst, NaOh produces ALOT of salts that will be treated as wastes
but it's cheaper and you need less quantity while KOH(another common catalyst) is cleaner but you'll need 1.4 times more quantity, assuming it's 99%+ pure too.

There's a lot of ways to know if the methanol you'll use is pure, either read the label or test it with CuSO4, each molecule of CuSO4 is bonded to 5 molecules of water, when you heat it up the water molecules will leave the compound and the CuSO4 will go from blue to white
Once it's white you put it in the methanol you'll use and leave it there for the night, if it's still white the next morning that means the methanol is good to use
Now you'll need to prepare the methoxid, which is the catalyst mixed with the base.
For new and unused vegetable oil you'll need 3.5 grams of base per liter of oil, and 200mL of methanol per Liter of oil (there's an excess of alcohol to make sure there's no shortage so ANY oil will transesterificate with those quantities)

To prepare it you put the methanol on a glass container and weight the quantity of NaOH you'll need(there's lots of calculus to do,I'll do it for you if you pm me)
Drop the base(not you skrillex, I see you) on the methanol and mix it until it's completely dissolved

It's a very exotermic reaction so take care while doing it, both methanol and NaOH are really higroscopic so be fast


THen you preheat the oil up to 55ºC and add the methoxid to the oil, you'll spend a lot of time mixing it so get a blender, it'll be tones easier

After that you let the mixture rest for a night and there will be two fases next day, glycerine under and biodiesel over

Separate, wash and use


This is a rather complicated process, do not follow mine to make it, this is just for information purposes
If you want a longer explanation I won't mind but you'll have to wait until next week