Biodiesel production from rapeseed oil which added fatty acids and investigation of the characteristics produced biodiesel

Liquid fuel is a very valuable resource used abundantly and somehow indiscriminately by people. Among the liquid fuels, crude oil is currently shown as the most valuable resource. Nowadays, increasing oil prices due to the depletion of fossil fuel reserves and political or economic reasons have accelerated the search for alternative energy sources. Scientists have shown in their studies that fossil fuels cause global warming and cause greenhouse gas accumulation. Thus an additional emphasis is being placed on the development, production and the use of alternative fuel considered being friendlier to the environment than fossil fuel. Energy is an essential factor in industrial growth and in provision of required services that improve the quality of life of people. The importance of energy security today has accelerated the process of defining biodiesel as a fuel with the potential for future fossil diesel replacement. Biodiesel is formed by the chemical reaction of renewable lipid raw materials with alcohols and it is used as an alternative fuel to diesel engines. The fact that biodegradable, non-toxic, renewable and environmentally friendly alternative fuel is the biggest influence on the work done on biodiesel. In the production of biodiesel, edible vegetable and animal oils are generally used as raw materials. In recent years, however, the fact that edible vegetable and animal fats used for biodiesel production compete with vegetable and animal fats used for food have caused some concerns. These concerns have been explored in search of new raw materials and research has been done on the use of waste oils for this purpose. It has been observed that biodiesel production from waste oils is possible. In this study, production of biodiesel was carried out using contaminant oil, which was formed by adding pure rapeseed oil with lauric acid, caproic acid, stearic acid and oleic acid. One step alkali-catalyzed transesterification and two step acid-alkali-catalyzed transesterification methods have been used to produce biodiesel from waste oils. The results obtained from both methods were examined and the fuel properties of the biodiesel that produced in different ways were compared in terms of standards and production efficiencies were observed. It has been determined that the basic fuel properties that measured for all biodiesel obtained as a result of the study conform to the standards and high production efficiency was achieved by the two step transesterification method.