A Taiwanese team has developed a way to convert waste cooking oil into biodiesel by heating it for 10 seconds in a microwave oven with a strontium oxide catalyst, a news report said Friday.
The process was developed by a team from Tainan City-based National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) in southern Taiwan, according to Taiwan Today. The team was led by Professor Liao Jiunn-der of the NCKU’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering in conjunction with Aharon Gedanken of Israel-based Bar-Ilan University, who is a visiting professor at the department.
The team applied to patent the technology, which converts 99 percent of the waste oil into biodiesel, the report said.
Taiwan produces about 540,000 metric tons of waste cooking oil per year, which create a serious environmental problem.
According to Gedanken, the key nanotechnologies are highly efficient, producing 1 percent glycerol in addition to the biodiesel, so nothing goes to waste.
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