How is it Made?

The chemical name for biodiesel is methyl ester, which is a long chain alkyl ester of organic fatty acids. Methyl ester is produced by a two-step chemical process, esterification and then transesterification.

These chemical processes cause a reaction between raw vegetable oils (such as palm, soy, corn, canola, coconut, peanut or sunflower), used vegetable oils or animal fats (such as beef tallow, poultry fat or pork lard), an alcohol (usually methanol) and an acid, either hydrochloric or sulphuric, together with a catalyst (sodium or potassium hydroxide).

Hydrochloric or sulphuric acid is used to remove any free fatty acids during esterification. Using methanol, transesterification then causes the oils’ triglycerides to react to form biodiesel and glycerine.

There is practically no waste and any produced is non-toxic and may be used in animal feed or fertilisers. This is because the transesterification process is highly efficient, and the molecular weights of the feed compounds (vegetable oil triglycerides and methanol) are virtually the same as the molecular weights of the compounds produced (biodiesel and glycerine). Queensland Biodiesel has selected a continuous process technology to produce their Biodiesel, which offers the optimum combination of capital and operating costs.

The Biodiesel manufacturing process utilised by the Queensland Biodiesel plant is a combination of various methods and processes currently used in the biodiesel industry. This combination of methods is known as the ET-2S-SC Tripadone Process (ETP). ETP is highly efficient and is able to accept a wide variety of feedstock materials, from high saturated fats to used cooking oil as well as higher quality oils such as canola, soy and palm. Queensland Biodiesel’s ETP can be constructed at low capital cost when compared to other available processing technology. A logical process flow is detailed in Figure 1 - ET-2S-SC Tripadone Biodiesel Manufacturing Process: