Abstract
Biodiesel has become a source of renewable energy that is in immense demand due to the rise in price of fuels and its utilization to produce various conventional assets. Biodiesel has gained wide attention as it emits less carbon monoxide and other pollutants, compared to that of fossil diesel. In this work, biodiesel was synthesized from waste frying oil (WFO) using a microwave-assisted transesterfication process under various operating conditions including microwave power, irradiation time, temperature, and catalyst dose. The Box-Behnken design was used to examine the biodiesel yield. Numerical optimization technique was used to obtain the maximum biodiesel production, which was found to be using a microwave power of 325 W, an irradiation time of 200 s, a temperature of 70°C, and a catalyst dose of 1 g/g. Using these conditions, a biodiesel production yield of 97% was achieved. Fuel properties of the synthetized biodiesel were compared with the ASTM D6751 biodiesel standards.