Reseachers from Brown University (United States) report a "streamlined" version of the biodiesel formation reaction from waste vegetable oils using bismuth triflate or scandium triflate as catalysts, in a microwave reactor. The conventional biodiesel formation reaction usually involves the addition of an acid (or base) and methanol to the oil for about 2 hours, at high temperature. The resulting product is a mixture of methyl esters, which is collectively known as "biodiesel". In the new process, the use of acid or base is made unnecessary, and energy consumption is reportedly lower. Only oil, methanol and the catalysts are raw materials that were placed inside a microwave reactor. According to the Brown University press release, the researchers found that " the new catalysts converted waste vegetable oil into biodiesel in about 20 minutes in the microwave reactor, whereas current reactions without catalysts using a conventional heater take two hours. While their microwave method needs a higher temperature to pull off the biodiesel conversion (150 degrees Celsius versus 60 degrees Celsius under current methods), it uses less energy overall because the reaction time is much shorter". A paper related to their research is published in the journal, Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry (URL above).