Development of Heater and Mixer Machine With Control System for Biodiesel Production

Biodiesel is one of the renewable energies that is environmentally friendly. Generally, it is made from renewable materials that consisting of fatty acids. Biodiesel can also be made from vegetable oil, animal oil and waste cooking oil. Producing biodiesel is divided into three stages: heating and stirring process, cooling and washing process, and drying and filtration process. In this study, a machine for the first stage processing of biodiesel-based waste cooking oil was made. The machine is used for heating and mixing waste cooking oil and catalyst materials. The developed machine is equipped with a control system that is aimed for detecting the temperature of mixture materials. The data obtained by the sensor is then used to regulate the flow rate of the gas. The flow of the gas is controlled by a valve that is actuated by a servo motor. Several tests have been carried out. The tests were aimed to determine several control parameters that is used in programming. Moreover, the objective of the tests is also to determine the effectiveness of the machine in producing fatty acid methyl ester (FAME). The test results show that the gas flow rate should be reduced when the temperature of mixture material reaches 55 Celsius. The gas flow rate was reduced by changing the gas valve angle from 90 to 13. The machine's ability in producing FAME has been tested using three different volumes of waste cooking oil. The results showed that the amount of FAME produced is quite large.