Cooking Oil Lab Report

The objective of the lab was to transform cooking oil into biodiesel. This was done in a reaction of fresh cooking oil, which is primarily composed of triglycerides, and methyl alcohol, and was catalyzed by sodium hydroxide. The reactants and products were both massed, so as to see how fully the chemical processes have been carried out. These values were compared with stoichiometrically calculated theoretical values in order to evaluate the reaction’s completeness. Biodiesel is chemically composed of fatty acid methyl esters. To create these, methanol is mixed with sodium hydroxide, which will act as a catalyst for the reaction. This mixture produces its own reaction between methanol and NaOH, which forms aqueous sodium methoxide in this

The stir bar was set to run at 450 RPM and a stir bar was added to the 500 mL Erlenmeyer flask. The NaOH and Methanol were added to the 500 mL Erlenmeyer flask which was put on the hot plate. The temperature was raised until it reached 50 degrees Celsius, where it was then raised until it was stable at 65 degrees Celsius. The reaction was allowed to proceed like this for 60 minutes, with the energy in watt-hours being measured. After 60 minutes, the reaction was taken off of the hot plate and was cooled down and then bottled to be used for the next

First, the glycerol and methyl esters were separated into two massed containers, which were then massed again in order to measure the mass of each product. After this, a series of titrations were performed on both products as well as a sample of unused fresh cooking oil. The first titration was done on the Biodiesel. 5 grams of biodiesel were dissolved in 100 mL of acetone. A little phenolphthalein was added to this mixture. The mixture was to be titrated with .01 M HCl if there was a color change which would indicate the presence of NaOH, but there was none, so the titration was deemed unnecessary. Then, 1 mL of bromophenol blue was added. This was titrated with .01 M HCl until a color change from blue to yellow occurred and the volume of HCl was recorded. This process was repeated, but with .5 g of glycerol and dissolved in 100 mL of isopropyl alcohol. Again, no color change occurred with the addition of phenolphthalein, and the second titration with .1 M HCl turned from blue to yellow, this time requiring much more HCl. Finally, 1.0 g of unused fresh cooking oil was mixed with 10 mL of isopropyl alcohol and titrated with 0.1 wt.% NaOH until the mixture became pink, indication the neutralization of free fatty