Effect of Alcohol Type: Pure methanol, ethanol and methanol + ethanol mixture of 1:1 ratio were used to investigate the effect of alcohol type on the settling behaviour of the glycerol.
All the reaction parameters such as reaction time, temperature, type of oil, alcohol concentration and catalyst were kept constant.
After remix of products, the position of the interface between sediment (glycerol) and supernatant liquid (biodiesel) for different alcohol is shown in Figure 4 as a function of t ime.
The results show that, keeping all the parameters constant, there are no differences in settling behaviour of glycerol when pure methanol and ethanol are used. However, significant effect was observed with a mixture of two alcohols.