As the consumption of vegetable oils increases and people dispose of them after their use in sewers, their negative impact on the environment and on increasing the economic cost of wastewater treatment, researchers around the world are seeking radical solutions to address this problem by recycling used oils and converting them into biofuels as a source of energy Renewable and environment-friendly. In this context, researcher Ayah Ibrahim Rastnawi, 24, a student at the Faculty of Environmental Engineering at the Syrian Baath University, was able to produce bio-fuel from the used oils.
Biofuels are a clean alternative to fossil fuels, derived from renewable biomass and, more specifically, environmentally friendly, sulfur-free, biodegradable and non-toxic alternative fuels.
Rastnawi said in an exclusive interview with the Observatory of the Future: "Due to the lack of scientific literature on the proportions of substances involved in the interaction, I tried during my research to reveal the mechanism of conversion and how to process oils for the collection of biofuels and work to obtain the optimum proportion of materials entering the interaction, The interaction and the lowest economic cost, by modifying the variables and conditions of interaction; the temperature and time of reaction and ratios of the reactive materials, and other factors affecting productivity ».
Biofuels depend on the addition of chemical catalysts to the vegetable oils used, heat the mixture to the desired temperature for a certain period of time, and then wash the resulting fuel with distilled water several times to purify the impurities and residues of the catalyst.
Rastnawi added that «the project faced a number of obstacles; including the difficulty of securing the chemicals needed to react and to test samples because of the high prices, and sometimes I had to return one experiment several times because of the failure of the experiment, and this is the nature of chemical work, forcing me to conduct 12 trials over two months, Without achieving the desired results, I feel frustrated, but the support of supervisors and while continuing to change the conditions, got a simple result at the beginning, and was the starting point to modify the variables until the optimal conditions for them ».
Biofuel can be used as an alternative to fossil fuels of all kinds (oil, gasoline, diesel) to operate plant machinery and diesel engines directly without modification, and for heating applications as well.
The most important characteristic of biofuels is that the emissions from combustion are 70% less than the emissions of fossil fuel combustion, as well as its bio-degradability, making it environmentally friendly.