International Journal of Applied Engineering Research

Biodiesel is a potential renewable fuel, chemically transformed from a variety of vegetable oils, animal tallows and waste cooking oils. Biodiesel is rapidly gaining impetus in India as an alternative fuel source to reduce its dependence on foreign fuel for diesel engines. This paper discusses the use of Taguchi and response surface methodology for maximizing the biodiesel yield from alkali catalysed transesterification of waste cooking oil. The experiments have been conducted using Taguchi's L₉ orthogonal array in the design of experiments technique. The process parameters used are reaction temperature, reaction time, amount of Methanol and amount of catalyst, each with three levels. The optimum process parameters for maximizing the biodiesel yield are determined using signal to noise (S/N) ratio. A second order response surface model has been established between the process parameters and biodiesel yield using response surface methodology. The adequacy of the developed model is verified using coefficient of determination (R). It was found that the R² value is 1. The predicted and measured values are fairly close, which indicates that the developed model can be effectively used to predict the biodiesel yield from alkali catalysed transestefification of waste cooling oil.