Masdar Institute touts innovative biodiesel reactor

The Masdar Institute of Science and Technology has developed a chemical reactor that produces high-quality biodiesel from fats, including waste cooking oil, with less energy and potentially at a lower cost than traditional reactors, it said Wednesday.

The project is sponsored by Tadweer, Abu Dhabi’s Center of Waste Management.

The novel reactor makes biodiesel in a continuous process and is much smaller than conventional reactors, meaning it can be used by a large number of organisations interested in waste transformation. It can produce 50 litres (13 gallons) of biodiesel per hour continuously, while a typical industrial-sized reactor may produce 500 liters every 10 hours in a batch process, Masdar Institute explained.

The reactor integrates mixing by soundwave agitation, flow mixing by a static mixer, and separation, recovery and purification to convert waste cooking oil into its two main components -- biodiesel and glycerol. This process generates much less of the unwanted glycerol and more biodiesel than the high-power mixing method employed by previous reactors and conventional industrial methods, Masdar Institute said.

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