Read To Know: How The Waste Cooking Oil You Dispose Can Now Power Vehicles

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A breakthrough

Having a hard time to believe? The centre in the Nitte, Udupi region of Karnataka has found out a cheaper alternative. A diesel fuel that is made by reacting vegetable oil with other common chemicals. It is less expensive, renewable and a clean-burning fuel. It can be used in any diesel automotive engine in its pure form or blended with petroleum-based diesel at any concentration.

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Pioneering research

NMAMIT(Nitte Mahalinga Adyanthaya Memorial Institute of Technology ) is the first one to produce biodiesel using the waste oil used for cooking from the hotels and bakers in the area. Rather than the waste oil being thrown in the drains it will be saved and put to some much-required use. A litre of cooking oil can produce up to 95% of bio-diesel. It is commonly produced by transesterification (a process of exchanging the organic group R″ of an ester with the organic group R′ of an alcohol. These reactions are often catalyzed by the addition of an acid or base catalyst) of the vegetable oil or the animal fat feedstock. This production process is used to convert the base oil to the desired fuel. Any free fatty acids in the base oil are either converted to soap or removed from the process or they are further esterifies using an acidic catalyst. After the processing, unlike vegetable oil, biodiesel has combustion properties that are similar to those of petroleum and can replace it in most current uses. A by-product of the process is glycerol/ glycerine. It is colorless, odourless viscous liquid.

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Store your oil

To collect the oil, barrels have been put to various places to store the waste cooking oil after they are done with the day’s cooking. C Vaman Rao, head of the department of biotechnology engineering informed that some places provide the barrels without any charge while some charge them for varying from rupees 25 to 30 per litre. These barrels are taken from the stores on a monthly basis.

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The Logical Indian congratulates the institute for their efforts. Given the large scale disposal of waste cooking oil, this finding can go a long way in energy self-sufficiency.