could you use ethanol instead of methanol to make biodiesel?

Answer 1

You can, yes but it is much slower, hence why we are using methanol in the lab.

This, at the moment, is one of my areas of research, oddly enough, but the main problem with ethanol is the proportion of water it contains.

With base catalysed transesterification, the main drawback is that you can't have more than 0.5% water otherwise the entire mix turns into a soap, which is a pain to separate. Ethanol usually has a much higher water content than methanol and the corresponding biodiesel burns at a slightly lower temperature.

So if you can get around the problems, then yes, ethanol can be used although I wouldnt recommend it. The fisished product may also have water in it which creates problems for engines as well

Answer 2

As you probably know, the ususal method to prepare biodiesel is to react fats with excess methanol in an acid catalyzed cross esterification reaction to prepare the methyl ester of the fatty acids and glycerol in a 3 to 1 ratio. After the reaction is finished, the excess methanol and glycerol is removed by extraction with water. The biodiesel ester can then be dried.

Yes, ethanol can be used to make an ethyl ester biodiesel as opposed to the methyl ester, but there are a few drawbacks. First, ethanol is much more expensive than methanol. Second, ethanol has a higher boiling point, so recovery of unreacted alcohol by distillation will be more expensive.

I believe that, once purified, both the ethyl and methyl ester forms of the biodiesel should work the same in the diesel engine.

Answer 3

do not mix any Alcohol and diesel u will blow up your motor. Alcohol can be mix in to gasoline and keep the percent low.