Biodiesel Production from Leather Industry Wastes as an Alternative Feedstock and its Use in Diesel Engines

Abstract

Waste leather fat is produced by the leather industry in fleshing processing and discarded as waste. These wastes can be used as a potential feedstock for biodiesel production due to their considerable fat content. In this work, raw fleshing oil which is a fat-originated waste of the leather industry was transesterified using methanol in the presence of an alkali catalyst to obtain biodiesel. The obtained biodiesel was then used in a four-stroke and direct injection diesel engine to evaluate the biodiesel behavior as an alternative diesel fuel, at a constant speed under variable load conditions. Blends [20 and 50% (v/v)] of biodiesel with diesel reference fuel were tested too. The emissions test results compared with diesel reference fuel showed that diesel engine fueled by biodiesel emitted significantly lower opacity and gaseous emissions than the same engine fueled by diesel reference fuel, and with very similar performance. The obtained data indicated that biodiesel from leather industry wastes is promising as an alternative fuel for diesel engines, and can be used to substitute diesel fuel in terms of performance and emission parameters without any engine modification.