Extra tips & tutorials

Biodiesel is a fuel for conventional Diesel engines made from plant or animal oils or fats that have been chemically transformed into alkyl esters.

“The use of plant oil as fuel may seem insignificant today. But such products can in time become just as important as kerosene and these coal-tar-products of today.”

This is a working chemistry primer designed to give you the basic chemistry knowledge you need to understand what is happening when you make biodiesel.

Before commencing any practical work, it is of the utmost importance to understand the risks involved with making biodiesel.

In this section we will go through the process of making biodiesel using a simple one-stage base-catalysed transesterification.

In order to look in more detail at the issues involved in practical biodiesel production we will take the example of a small-scale batch system making 100-litre batches.

The ‘basic method’ is the single-stage base-catalysed transesterification method. There are a number of variations on this method which may yield better fuel quality with certain feedstocks.

When you make larger amounts of biodiesel you will inevitably end up with quite a large store of glycerine.