Biodiesel....A step into clean and green future...

Leonardo Di Caprio recently visited our country’s capital and emphasized the fact to the world that we have to pay more attention to mother earth. It is on such occasions that the harsh reality strikes us all – the taken –for- granted attitude we have with respect to our planet. People go pro-environment for a few days ……… then it’s back to square one. Everyone talks about a clean and green planet. My question is, how many of us actually work towards this future of ours? Do we really have to talk about building residences on other planets to sustain the human race when everything is available on earth? It’s just that we have to wake up from our slumber and protect the greatest treasure that all of us posses collectively.  28th October 2015 marks a special day in our institution’s effort to make our world a cleaner, greener and self sufficient place. It is on this day that we started using biodiesel in our transport system. Biodiesel, as the name suggests, is diesel which is derived from organic sources. These sources range from seeds (honge, rubber, naikuli, honne) to used cooking oil. Being a biotechnology graduate, I am happy to be part of our school’s endeavour to help make this world a better place.  The biodiesel is produced by making use of materials like hone seeds which are generally not used by the public. These seeds are crushed in a machine. The crushing of the seeds releases the oil content which is present within, which is collected separately. After crushing the remains of the seed i.e. the seed coat is considered to be an excellent type of manure for growing plants.   The collected oil is cleared of any and all debris to leave behind clear oil using the process of sedimentation. Filtration is carried out as a protective measure to doubly make sure that no particle is left in the oil. The purified oil is then heated to 60 degrees, Sodium hydroxide (5g per litre or 1%) is added as a catalyst and methanol (25-30% of oil volume) is added to this heated oil. A catalyst is a chemical substance which increases the rate of reaction but does not directly take part in the reaction. Reaction which occurs is called Base-catalyzed Transesterification reaction. Transesterification is the process of exchange the organic group R” of an ester with the organic group R’ of an alcohol. It is prolonged reaction which occurs over a span of 1.5 hours.  A waiting period of 4 hours is followed to separate the diesel and methanol. Once the reaction is completed, two products are obtained, namely glycerine which constitutes 10%-15% of the products and the remaining is biodiesel. Glycerine is used in the production of soaps and hence becomes a useful by-product in this process. The methanol is separated from the biodiesel using the process called washing. Washing is the process where the product is rinsed with water which is at 50 degrees till the soapiness caused due to sodium hydroxide disappears.   Once the methanol is removed, the next step is to remove the water which may be present in the diesel. Here, we employ the Drying process wherein the washed biodiesel is heated at 110 degrees for 30 minutes. The product obtained is filtered using engine filters. The filtered product is what is known as biodiesel. In this aspect, I would like to place on record my sincere thanks to our honorable Chairman for giving me a chance to get this journey off to a great start. I would also like to thank Mr. Thyagishchandra Shetty, Manager of facilities, Ms. Prajna Shetty and Mr. Harish Kotian from the transport department for wholeheartedly supporting me in this step.   My special thanks to Dr. C Vaman Rao, Professor and Head of Department of Biotechnology engineering, NMAMIT, Nitte, Dr. Ujwal P, Prof. Venkatesh Kamath, Prof. Vinayaka B Shet and Mr. Santhosh Poojary from the Department of Biotechnology Engineering, NMAMIT, Nitte who have helped our school in reaching this milestone event.   I hope and pray that each of us will take matters regarding our planet and its livability on a serious note and help us in our mission of creating a clean, green and livable planet, which we call home.

Pranav Shetty
Academc Coordinator