Production of biodiesel from fish waste and characterization of produced biodiesel

In recent years, the interest on biodiesel as an alternative source of petroleum based fuel is increasing rapidly. Because it is renewable, biodegradable, nontoxic and can solve the energy related problems, mainly reducing the emission of gases which leads to global warming. In the present work, a new and environment friendly process was studied for the production of biodiesel from fish waste. The fat was extracted from fish waste by using water as the solvent at a temperature of 80oC and then saponification was performed out to remove free fatty acids. The transesterification was carried out by using methanol and potassium hydroxide as catalyst to convert fat to biodiesel. The yield of biodiesel was obtained upto to 85%. The confirmation of biodiesel was done by using Jan Warnquist or 3/27 test. The properties such as pour point, cloud point, sulfur content, acid number and kinematic viscosity were evaluated. The characterizations of the produced biodiesel showed that the biodiesel is of good quality and it meets the ASTM standards.