An environmentally beneficial .facile and clean method for the production of Biodiesel from waste cooking oil has been developed. Solid acids namely do-decatungstophosphoric acid (TPA) and do decamolybdophosphoric acid (MPA) have been used as heterogeneous catalysts for the production of Bioidesel with Methanol. A study for optimizing the reaction conditions such as the methanol to oil ratio, amount of catalyst, reaction time, temperature and the usage times of the catalyst has been performed for TPA and MPA solid acid catalysts. Though both are environmental friendly comparison of the yield for varying reaction conditions proves keggin type 12 Tungstophosphoric acid to be promising in Biodiesel production via the transesterification route. Moreover TPA shows a very high catalytic activity under the optimized reaction conditions when compared to a conventional homogenous catalyst such as Sodium hydroxide and can easily be separated from the product and reused for several more runs. The fuel properties of WCO Biodiesel were found to be in agreement with ASTM standards.

Keywords: Biodiesel, Transesterification, Heteropolyacid, Waste cooking oil, Optimization