Hello everyone,
I'm Kavitha, back again into biofuels. As I had already mentioned a few months back, I had some problems in convincing my prof. at college to take up "production of biodiesel" as my project for M.Sc. in Environmental Science. At last, I have convinced him and I have also started producing biodiesel from Mahua oil using ethanol and acid catalyst. I have been following the procedures given in the various websites. The problem is: I don't get two layers of biodiesel and glycerol after the settling period. Instead, I get a bottom layer, which resembles biodiesel and a top layer of clear liquid (pale green in colour). I'm not sure whether the top layer is ethanol but i'm pretty sure about the bottom layer as its properties are similar to that of diesel. Now, where has the glycerol gone? Or, will I not get glycerol when I use acid catalyst instead of NaOH? What can I do with the top layer? I have also found out that the boiling point of the top layer is around 78 deg. Celsius. So, taking it to be ethanol, can I reuse it? (But, its colour stops me from re-using it!). I'm a bit confused. Can anyone help me? Kavitha. --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
