Pre-treatment of waste cooking oil with high free fatty acids content for biodiesel production: An optimization study via response surface methodology

Abstract

Biodiesel is an alternative diesel fuel producing from vegetable oils or animal fats. At the present, most biodiesel is made from cooking oils with a very low amount of free fatty acid (FFA). Therefore, the cost of biodiesel is higher than Petroleum diesel. However, the production cost of biodiesel can be reduced by using low-cost feedstock oils such as waste cooking oil (WCO). There are some studies about acid-catalyzed esterilication process as a pretreatment of WCO with high FFA for biodiesel production. However, there have not many appropriate methods to optimize for this process. In his study, based on response surface methodology (RSM).