Kompas.com – Cooking oil is often considered waste and immediately discarded. In fact, this used oil can still be utilized in various ways.
Some people choose to sell used cooking oil to collectors. However, there are other ways that are more useful to process it yourself at home.
Also read: 5 Health Benefits of Olive Oil, Can Maintain Heart Health
Cooking oil waste that can be discarded carelessly can pollute the environment. This oil can clog waterways and damage the soil ecosystem.
Instead of being wasted, used cooking oil can be processed into useful products. This article will discuss how to process it into soap, candle, to biodiesel fuel.
Also read: 4 Differences of Oil and Red Eating Oil
1. Making soap from used cooking oil
Cooking oil can be processed into soap by mixing it with soda fire. This process results in a chemical reaction that converts oil into stem soap that can be used daily.
According to Janice Smith in Organic Chemistry Third Edition (2011), soap is a salt from fatty acids produced through oil reactions with base solutions such as soda fire (NaOH).
Janetti Francischi, a Pharmacy from Brazil, also mentioned that used cooking oil must be filtered first before mixing with a fire soda solution and stirred for 40 minutes to be perfectly mixed (Nature, 30 June 2022).
Illustration of used cooking oil.
2. Processing used cooking oil into a candle
Candles from used cooking oil can be made by mixing it with bee candles or stearin. After being heated and mixed with oil, this wax can be formed and given the aroma as desired.
Luh Putu Wrisiati in the journal Advances in Food Science, Sustainable Agriculture and Agroindustrial Engineering (2021) explains that used cooking oil needs to be clarified with active charcoal before mixing with stearin and alcohol.
This process eliminates unpleasant odors and creates high quality candles.
Illustration of used cooking oil. 3. Donate used cooking oil to the biodiesel processing
If you do not want to process it yourself, used cooking oil can be collected and handed over to the Cooking Oil Bank. This oil will later be processed into biodiesel fuel.
According to Nancy E. Carpenter in Chemistry of Sustainable Energy (2014), biodiesel is made from vegetable oil mixed with alcohol and catalysts such as fire soda (NaOH).
This process takes about 4 hours to produce fuel that can be used as an alternative to renewable energy.
In addition, Faris Razanah Zharfan, CEO of Buying Cookies, revealed that more than 525,000 liters of used cooking oil were wasted every month in Jakarta (Kompas.id).
Programs such as buying cooking helps collect used cooking oil from households, restaurants, and food industries to be processed into biodiesel by certified companies.
By processing used cooking oil, either into soap, candles, or biodiesel, we can reduce environmental pollution and make it more useful.
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