The leaves of radish and sweet potato are potent sources for producing low-cost biodiesel from waste cooking oil, an Egyptian scholar and his associates at central Assam’s Tezpur University have discovered. One study is aimed at producing biodiesel from waste soybean oil using radish leaves as a base catalyst while the other is on producing biodiesel from microalgal oil and waste cooking oil using waste sweet potato leaves as catalyst.
Khalifa Said H. Eldiehy from Alexandria in Egypt is the lead author of both the studies. The other authors include his supervisor Manabendra Mandal of the university’s Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology and Dhanapati Deka of the university’s Department of Energy.
The new and innovative chemical process has significantly reduced the cost of the production of biofuel, a long-term quest of scientists around the globe, Eldiehy said.
There are plans to apply this process of low-cost biodiesel production on a large scale in Egypt in collaboration with Tezpur University and Indian authorities.
Source: thehindu.com