The Chemistry of Biodiesel Production Term Paper

The Chemistry of Biodiesel Production - Term Paper Example Biodiesel is one such form of hydrocarbon based fuels. The American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) defines biodiesel fuel as monoalkyl esters of long chain fatty acids derived from a renewable lipid feedstock, such as vegetable oil or animal fat (Zhang et al. 1). It is made by chemically combining any natural oil, fat or recycled grease with a suitable alcohol in the presence of a catalyst. The general equation that can be used to predict the amount of biodiesel that will be made from fats and oils is as shown: 100 pounds of oil + 10 pounds of methanol > 100 pounds of biodiesel + 10 pounds of glycerol Biodiesel can be used as neat (B 100) or in a blend with petroleum diesel for example a blend of 20 % biodiesel with 80 % petro-diesel by volume, is termed â€Å"B 20† (van Gerpen et al. 22). ... The Biox process involves the use of a co-solvent, tetrahydrofuran (THF), to solubilize the methanol. THF enhances solubility of the alcohol in the triglyceride phase and thus hastens the otherwise slow reaction (van Gerpen et al. 38). With THF the reaction takes 5 to 10 minutes at a low temperature of 30 °C. On the other hand, in the supercritical process a high alcohol to oil ratio (42:1) mixture is subjected to supercritical conditions – temperatures of 350 – 400  °C and pressures of 1200 pounds per square inch and above. So far, the huge capital and operating costs incurred in performing the supercritical reactions have made scaling up of this process to be quite difficult (van Gerpen et al. 40). The most common way to produce biodiesel is through transesterification. Transesterification refers to a catalyzed chemical reaction involving vegetable oil and an alcohol to yield fatty acid alkyl esters (which is the biodiesel) and glycerol. Catalyzed processes ca n be further subdivided into three major processes: acid catalyzed processes, alkali catalyzed processes and enzyme catalyzed processes (Zhang et al. 2). The alkali catalyzed process involves use of a basic catalyst such as sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide whereas the acid catalyzed process involves the use of an acid such as sulfuric, phosphoric, hydrochloric, or organic sulfonic acids as the catalyst. In enzyme catalyzed processes, lipases are used to catalyze transesterification in either aqueous or non-aqueous systems. Acid catalyzed and alkali catalyzed processes are the ones that continue to receive the most attention largely because the production of enzymes is significantly costly and their reactions remarkably slower (Zhang et al. 2). As mentioned previously,

Internship Report Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Internship Report - Essay Example 1. Understanding the work environment: Most of the things I studied in my degree were theoretical. I was expecting to get a fair overview about how units and components of an organisation works together to attain the results that have been set by the top elements of the organisation; 2. Communication skills development: I sought to get important skills and competencies in communicating and delivering information to parties within and outside an organisation. So I made it a point to learn and study the way different stakeholders and different players interact in an organisation and also try to work on it. 3. Cultural Competency: Since the world is multicultral now, I sought to understand the way a city like London works to integrate all the cultural requirements of its diverse environment in the workplace. To this end, I sought to understand how people interact within the organisation and how they interacted with external stakeholders. In a very critical sense, I did not get to learn all what I wanted and sought to learn. This is because the responsibilities I was given seemed to have been far from what other stakeholders and other top managers were required to do. Thus, I was not able to appreciate things to the depths that I wished I could uncover. However, being a basic marketer gave me the chance to observe a lot of things from afar. I was able to understand how the organisation operations and how it sought to provide its services to people who use their services. I was also able to understand how marketing operates and how it links up to the various units and components of an organisation. Hence, I could understand my actual contribution to the firm. I could not learn much about how to attain efficiency and effectiveness since most of the things I was supposed to do were straightforward and could be done fairly easily without challenges. However, I could observe the areas where critical results were expected and I could understand