Print PDF
Favorite
Email
Step 4Titrate your oil
This is where we test the acidity of the oil, by measuring the free fatty acids, to see how much NaOH is needed for the reaction.
Start by measuring out 1 gram of NaOH and mixing that with one liter of the distilled water. This gives you a 1/1000 solution. Keep this, you won't use it all on one titration.
Next measure out 10 milliliters of the isopropyl and 1 milliliter of your WVO sample. Mix these in the same jar. Now add about 5 drops of Phenol Red indicator to this solution; swirl to get it mixed. Fill the last syringe with your lye/water solution and add 1/4 milliliter at a time while swirling the jar. Once it turns bright pink and stays that way you need to count exactly how many milliliters of lye/water solution you used to neutralize the acidity of the oil.
Now we can use this information to tell us how much NaOH to use in the reaction.
The formula is this:
For NaOH- # of liters of oil x 4 grams + titration
For example, say I titrated at 2 milliliters and was using 50 liters of oil. I would do 50 x 6=300. 300 grams of NaOH for that batch.
Start by measuring out 1 gram of NaOH and mixing that with one liter of the distilled water. This gives you a 1/1000 solution. Keep this, you won't use it all on one titration.
Next measure out 10 milliliters of the isopropyl and 1 milliliter of your WVO sample. Mix these in the same jar. Now add about 5 drops of Phenol Red indicator to this solution; swirl to get it mixed. Fill the last syringe with your lye/water solution and add 1/4 milliliter at a time while swirling the jar. Once it turns bright pink and stays that way you need to count exactly how many milliliters of lye/water solution you used to neutralize the acidity of the oil.
Now we can use this information to tell us how much NaOH to use in the reaction.
The formula is this:
For NaOH- # of liters of oil x 4 grams + titration
For example, say I titrated at 2 milliliters and was using 50 liters of oil. I would do 50 x 6=300. 300 grams of NaOH for that batch.
| « Previous Step | Download PDFView All Steps | Next Step » |
In many cases its dificult to get 100 % pure catalyst (NaOH or KOH)
Divide your base (4 grams in above example) by purity.
If NaOH is used and its 90% pure divide 4 by 0.9 = 4.44 and add this to your titration result using above example (4.44 + 2) = 6.44 x 50 = 322g needed.
Failing to do this, you could leave free fatty acids (FFA) in your processor / finished biodiesel because you didn't account for purity and add enough catalyst.
The point of titrating is to find out exactly how much "extra" catalyst we need to deal with the FFA's over the basic formula for virgin veg oil.
Hope this helps.