Substantial Purification of Waste Glycerol – A Byproduct of Biofuel Industry its Product Characterization

An increase in greenhouse gas effect and depletion of fossil fuel leads to work on alternate renewable source of energy. Biofuel, in which biodiesel has gained its importance over a decade due to its promising characteristics. Crude glycerol is produced as an inevitable byproduct during biodiesel production. The carbon content of the waste glycerol can be utilized by many microorganisms as a cheap carbon and energy source for the production of high value chemicals like ethanol, citric acid, propanediol etc. In this present work simple sequential procedures like distillation, acidification, activated charcoal adsorption, filtration and centrifugation were carried out made to remove major impurities economically and increases the glycerol concentration. The removal of impurities from crude glycerol and the increase in the concentration of glycerol were witnessed from GCMS and GC-FID reports. The procedure followed in this work provided a realistic and concrete target shows a momentous proliferation of increased glycerol concentration from 10.43% to 44 %. The other properties of glycerol were studied and compared with standard methods.