Calvin College
From Left: Joshua Harbert, Christian Ocier, Mitch Kenyon, Fred Thielke, Adebo Alao
Outline
•Introduction
•What – Project Overview
•Why – Underlying Reasons
•How – Description of Project
•Chemical Process
•Mechanical Apparatus
•Conclusion
•Acknowledgements
•Questions
Our Project
Design and construct a process to convert
waste vegetable oil into biodiesel
•Cost-effective
•Saves energy
•Reduces pollution
Why Are We Doing This?
1. We believe that:
•There is a shortage of fossil fuel energy
•There is no single answer to this problem
2. We also believe that the solutions will be dependent on:
•Life style changes
•Cultural and regional resource use
•Sustainable/renewable energy
3. Education and good examples
will be very important
in solving this problem
The Future of our Project
Tentative plans for reactor
•Donate to Calvin College
•Campus Student Organization will operate reactor to
fuel a campus commuter van
•Provide the machine to a company considering
investing in this sort of equipment
Long Term Potential
This process can be used to make high quality automotive
fuel from a commercial waste product
Possibilities for reactor
•Donate to Calvin College for use in vehicles
•Use it for feasibility tests with another company to
improve current production methods
The Biodiesel Production Process
Chemical Overview
• Two Reactions
– The first reaction converts free fatty acids to
biodiesel
– The second reaction converts the rest of the oil to
biodiesel
– Both use an alcohol as a reactant
Mechanical Overview
• Four Subsystems
– The filter cleans the waste vegetable oil (WVO)
– The reaction vessel holds the reactions
– The methanol recovery system helps keep costs
and energy use low by helping reuse ingredients
– The polisher helps to produce a very pure fuel by
removing contaminants at the end
Filter
Waste vegetable oil is classified as garbage –
and it starts out looking like garbage
To make it work in our system,
we have to clean it up:
•Remove Water
•Remove food remains
Reactor Vessel
Basic Components
•Reaction vessel
•Filter
•Polisher
•Pump
•Agitator
•Vacuum Pump
•Methanol Condenser
Purification
After the reaction, there is some extra
undesirable byproducts or unreacted
chemicals that contaminate the biodiesel
This is done in two stages:
•Water washing
•Chemical contaminant removal
Methanol Removal System
Vacuum Distillation:
•Puts a vacuum on reactor vessel to help
boil the alcohol at lower temperature
•Methanol is removed and collected for
later re-use
•Uses much less energy than other
systems
•Sealed system ensures no toxic fumes
leak
Conclusion
• Costs
– It costs us less than half the price of diesel at the
pump
• Pollution
– Biodiesel releases far less toxic emissions than
regular “petro-diesel”
Thanks and Acknowledgements
•Energy Office of Michigan
•Calvin College
•The University of Waterloo
•Mary Jo Pulte
Questions?