Biodiesel production from aquatic vegetation

Abstract

Biodiesel production from natural resources has drawn special focus due to its cost effectiveness, environmental friendliness and affordability compared to the environmentally challenging fossil fuels. The aquatic vegetation especially marine algae and weeds, is considered as the more secure, less competitive and express an exponential growth rate in their natural habit. They have the capacity to produce diverse waste supplements without much care, and most of the aquatic plants are not utilized for human food and animal feed. Biodiesel is produced by reacting lipids with alcohol that results in fatty acid esters. Transesterification and oil extraction are the two prime processes where diverse mechanical and chemical approaches involve. Transesterification reaction comprises of changing fatty oils into unsaturated fat alkyl esters, with alcohol and alkali catalyst with glycerol as a by-product. Oil is extracted by using solvents hexane, diethyl ether by soxhlet apparatus. Marine vegetational biomass can acquire lipids with in their cells like extracted oils from vegetables with a possibility to deliver multiple times more oil than some other terrestrial vegetation. Aquatic macro and microalgal and sea grass biomass can play a vital role in solving the issue of excessive energy demand for the increasing human population through their mass usage in the biodiesel production in the future and can help to fulfill the expectations, while decreasing the emission of greenhouse gases. Nonetheless, all the serious challenges should be successfully