Utilization of kitchen food waste for biodiesel production

Food waste has led to handling and disposal problems affecting human health and polluting environment. Land disposal is one of the ways of disposing food waste but it produces harmful leachate when rain water falls on it. Reuse of food waste for biodiesel production is one of the key steps to reduce food waste problem and also meet the energy demand. Food waste in the present study was collected from the kitchen of a hostel of an educational institute located in India. This waste was dried by various drying methods to dewater. Lesser is the moisture content, more will be the lipid extraction and hence increased biodiesel production. Lipids were extracted and fatty acids (caproic acid (6: 1), lauric acid (12: 0), mystric acid (14: 0), palmitic acid (16: 0), stearic acid (17: 0) and oleic acid (18: 0) were identified in gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). These fatty acids identified in lipid indicate the potential of food waste for biodiesel production. Transesterification of lipid was performed to produce biodiesel and concentration of fatty acid methyl ester was determined using gas chromatograph flame ionisation detector (GC-FID). Further, biodiesel properties were compared with various standards.