Abstract
Waste cooking oil (WCO) has been an environmental problem in different cities around the world. It has been reported that 1 liter of WCO could contaminate 1,000 liters of water. A possible solution is collection for recycling and integration into different chemical processes, although, due to related logistical aspects, collection in large cities is difficult. In this work, a combinatorial optimization model based on the Vehicle Routing Problem is proposed that seeks to obtain the optimal cost of the WCO in the city of Bogotá produced in restaurants, shopping centers and food services. It was determined that in this city there are 17,008 commercial establishments located in 19 localities that produce 720,000 liters per month. This oil could be collected for the production of biodiesel, for which a representative sample of each locality was taken and a total of 289 collection points were used. For the programming of the model, an adaptation of the VRP Solver application was carried out, which allowed obtaining the optimal collection routes from which a value of US $ 0.22-0.25 was determined as the optimal cost of collection in the city of Bogotá. The results have shown that by applying route optimization, WCO could be collected in Bogotá at a competitive cost compared to virgin palm oil and under the results it is considered a very convenient option for the partial substitution of oil as a raw material in the biodiesel production process.
