Biodiesel is appealing and interesting due to the fact
that it can be made from numerous natural sources. Plant
oil is the ___1___
source of biodiesel. Scientists and engineers normally
use oils from familiar crops such as soybean, canola,
palm, cottonseed, sunflower and peanut to produce
biodiesel. Biodiesel can even be made from
recycled cooking oil and animal fat. All biodiesel
sources have one thing in common, and that is that they
all ___2___ fat in
some form. Oils are actually just fats that are in a
liquid form at room temperature. these fats, or
triglycerides, are made up of carbon, hydrogen, and
oxygen atoms bound together and arranged into a specific
pattern. These triglycerides can be found quite
frequently in things such as household vegetable oils
and butter. Glycerol is a recurrent ___3___
used in production of things such as soap,
pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.
Biodiesel is not pure vegetable oil. Although raw
vegetable oil has been used to fuel diesel engines in
the past, it was found to cause ___4___
. The raw fat or oil must first be put through a series
of chemical reactions in order to be turned into fuel.
Most manufacturing facilities produce industrial
biodiesel through a process called transesterification.
In this process, the fat or oil is first purified and
then reacted with an alcohol, usually methanol or
ethanol in the ___5___
of a catalyst such as potassium hydroxide or sodium
hydroxide. When this happens, the triglycerides are
transformed to form esters and glycerol. the esters that
remain are what we then call biodiesel. |