Re: [Biofuel] Trying to produce biodiesel in laboratory scale

[Andres Secco]

Dear Tom, The only way to KOH or NaOH to activate the Methanol is acting as a strong base. Without some water in the system it doesn´t work. ----- Original Message ----- From: Tom Irwin To: Biofuel@sustainablelists.org Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2006 4:54 AM Subject: Re: [Biofuel] Trying to produce biodiesel in laboratory scale Andres,   Doesn´t the water poison the catalyst and give you saponification reactions? From: Andres Secco [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Biofuel@sustainablelists.org Sent: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 00:37:16 -0300 Subject: Re: [Biofuel] Trying to produce biodiesel in laboratory scale Dear Duarte, The basic reaction you are doing is a nucleophilic reaction were the methoxide replaces the glycerine in the fatty acid. So you get free methylstearates (if the oil have stearic acid). This substances called methyl-Stearates or Linoleates are the Biodiesel. Now, I have some questions What kind of methanol do you use, absolut? Try using a 96% instead and add some water to it 20 ml. It must be ready for use in 1 hour and is far less toxic than the absolut. What I see is the following. The non reacted glicerine still have some unreacted portions which act as emulsifiers and do emusify some polar phase in the biodiesel.  Once you separate the upper phase add more methoxide and separate again. Must be much clearer. Try rinsing with alkaline water too.     snip _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/ Visita www.tutopia.com y comienza a navegar más rápido en Internet.Tutopia es Internet para todos.

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