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TEZPUR: An international research scholar of Tezpur University (TU) from Alexandria, Egypt, Khalifa Said, has successfully produced bio-diesel from residual food items such as cooking oil waste and the leaves of radish and sweet potato. This new and innovative chemical process has significantly reduced the cost of the production of bio-fuel, an issue scientists around the globe have been exploring gravely.
Khalifa, under the supervision of Prof. Manabendra Mandal, Department of MBBT, Tezpur University, and co-supervision of Prof. Dhanapati Deka, Department of Energy, Tezpur University, published papers on this process in reputed science journals such as Renewable Energy (IF:8.634) and Industrial crops and products (IF: 6.449).
"Our primary intention is to stop climate change," said Khalifa. "Day-to-day food items such as used cooking oil, thrown away by households and restaurants as waste, can be used as feedstock for producing bio-diesel at a much lower cost," Khalifa said.
Prof. Mandal said, "Agricultural wastes are promising sources for producing renewable and sustainable clean energies."
Generally, bio-diesel is produced by the reaction between triglyceride feedstock and alcohol in the presence of a catalyst to form the fatty acid methyl ester (bio-diesel) and glycerol. Khalifa changed the feedstock oil and catalyst in the chemical process to reduce the cost of the production of bio-diesel. He treated residual cooking oil and algae oil, which are then used as feedstock oil.
Khalifa started working on this project in October 2019, but his work was affected and slowed down by the Covid-19 pandemic. He used the facilities of the Department of Energy, Tezpur University for his experiments, and the Sophisticated Analytical Instrumentation Centre (SAIC), Tezpur University and North East Institute of Science and Technology (NEIST), Jorhat for analysis.
Currently, the techno-economical analysis of the project is underway to determine the actual cost of the production of bio-diesel. Khalifa plans to apply this process of low-cost bio-diesel production on a large scale in his home country Egypt in collaboration with Tezpur University and Indian authorities.
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