Qualitative role of heterogeneous catalysts in biodiesel production from Jatropha curcas oil
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Date
2020
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Biofuel Research Journal 26 (2020) 1159-1169
Abstract
Biodiesel properties are in general attributed to the composition and properties of the oil feedstock used, overlooking the possible impacts
of the catalyst preparation details. In light of that, the impacts of different catalyst preparation techniques alongside those of different
support materials on the yield, composition, and fuel properties of biodiesels produced from the same oil feedstock were
investigated. More specifically, tri-metallic (Fe-Co-Ni) catalystwas synthesized through two different techniques (green synthesis
and wet impregnation) using MgO orZnOas support material. The generated catalyst pairs, i.e., Fe-Co-Ni/MgOand Fe-Co
Ni/ZnOprepared by wet impregnation and Fe-Co-Ni-MgOand Fe-Co-Ni-ZnOprepared by green synthesis(using leaf extracts)
were used in the transesterification process of Jatropha curcasoil. Detailed morphological properties, composition, thermal
stability, crystalline nature, and functional groups characterization of the catalysts were also carried out. UsingBox-Behnken
Design response surface methodology, it was found that the green-synthesized Fe-Co-Ni-MgOcatalyst resulted inthe highest
biodieselyield of 97.9%. More importantly, the fatty acid methyl ester (FAME)profiles of the biodieselsproduced using the
four catalysts as well as their respective fuel properties were different in spite ofusing thesame oilfeedstock.
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Citation
Green synthesis Wet impregnation Jatropha curcasoil Biodiesel Unsaturation FAME profile