Grease to Diesel

[JamilAkbar]

Hello,

I am new to this forum and is not expert at all regarding petroleum engineering. Somebody told me that diesel can be made from Grease by adding sulfuric acid to it. Is it correct? If yes then is it viable at large scale. Is it legal?

He told me that one of his friend is doing this business and processing 4000 drums per month. He is using Irani Calcium Grease and using so called chemical H2SO4 (Sulfuric Acid) and getting 90% diesel and 10% waste.

I would like to educate myself about this process and its technicality.

Thanks

 

[LittleInch]

Amazngly enough it seems to be true

See

http://www.extension.org/pages/2800...verting_Used_Oil_and_Trap_Grease_to_Biodiesel

and follow the links under acid pre-treatment

As usual it is a bit more complex and time consuming (mixing period is days not hours)than might first appear....

My motto: Learn something new every day

Also: There's usually a good reason why everyone does it that way

 

[moltenmetal]

If you're making biodiesel from calcium soap and sulphuric acid, you're missing a reagent- methanol.

If you're just interested in making stearic acid or mixed free fatty acid, that's not anywhere nearly what a person would call diesel, though you can probably run a diesel engine on it- if you keep it melted...

 

[0707]

This kind of way to to make biodiesel are not new at the moment we have an unit which is processing biodiesel from animal fat.

 

[moltenmetal]

"Acid ptretreatment" for feeds with high free fatty acid content is definitely not new. But the process is still esterification with methanol, not just acid hydrolysis of a soap/grease.

 

[geesamand]

If mixing this material is the limiting factor in productivity, then there are a very few mixing setups that can move thick material around efficiently. Maybe only one. Invest in a mixing expert and lab time if this needs to be viable, as the difference between optimal and suboptimal mixing can be orders of magnitude.