Bleaching of Crude Glycerol by Organobentonite

As an alternative to fossil fuel, production of biodiesel is very attractive but limited supply of raw materials, capital and production costs make the process less economically feasible. Because the process economics is improved by the supplementary utilization of glycerole, refinery of the crude glycerole is of importance even it means the additional cost affecting the sale of glycerole in addition to its quality. In this work, use of organobentonites is proposed for bleaching. It was found that the mixture of 1% of activated carbon and %1 of microwave dried organoclay is effective as 3% of activated carbon for 50°C and 1 hour contact time. Thus, a 60% reduction obtained in the amount of activated carbon points that the method proposed has the potentialities to evaluate a more feasible process economics.