Decolorization of crude Glycerol using activated carbon

Abstract

Glycerol is a very valuable product that is high in demand in cosmetic, pharmaceutical and food industries. Crude glycerol is the main source of glycerol and is obtained as by-product from biodiesel industry. However, due to rapid growth of biodiesel industries, amount of crude glycerol produced is exceeding its applications industry. Thus, crude glycerol is becoming surplus and categorized as waste due to its contamination effect. Refining process is applied on the crude glycerol to recover the glycerol. Decolorization of crude glycerol is a crucial stage opted to remove the dark brown color of the crude glycerol. Activated carbon (HmBg Chemicals Inc., Hamburg, Germany) was used as the adsorbent in this work considering its widely known decolorizing abilities. The utilization of chemicals which were able to pre-treat the crude glycerol before the color removal stages was performed by considering the justification and statements of previous research works. From the result obtained after experimental works, application of activated carbon at 200 g/L dosage, 500 rpm agitation rate and 150 minutes of contact time showed the highest color removal from the crude glycerol