abstract
More than 95% of biodiesel production feedstocks come from edible oils, however it may cause some problems such as the competition of land use between food production and biodiesel production. The waste cooking oils (WCO) are an alternative feedstock for biodiesel production: its usage reduces significantly the cost of biodiesel production and has environmental benefits, e.g., a waste recovery instead of its elimination. This work aims to produce a low-cost efficient solid catalyst for fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) production using mixtures of refined palm oil (RPO) and WCO. Four low cost catalysts were prepared (biomass fly ashes, natural dolomite rock, chicken eggshells and polyethylene terephthalate - PET), characterized (by SEM, EDX, XRD, BET, FT-IR and Hammett indicators) and tested regarding their performance in FAME production. The maximum yield of FAME achieved was around 96% wt. for biomass fly ashes catalyst at 60 degrees C, 9:1 (mol/mol) of methanol to oil mixture, 10%wt. catalyst to oil mixture, over 180 min in batch reactor. The results point out for promising bifunctional catalysts able to achieve also conversion of free fatty acids up to 100% using mixtures of RPO and WCO. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
keywords
BIODIESEL PRODUCTION; HETEROGENEOUS CATALYSTS; CALCIUM-OXIDE; FATTY-ACID; BASE CATALYST; BOILER ASH; WOOD ASH; TRANSESTERIFICATION; CARBON; ESTERIFICATION
subject category
Science & Technology - Other Topics; Energy & Fuels
authors
Vargas, EM; Neves, MC; Tarelho, LAC; Nunes, MI
our authors
acknowledgements
Edgar M. Vargas S. express his sincere gratitude to the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University of Colombia (Direction of Investigation, Creation and Extension) for the financial assistance of this work. The authors thanks for the financial support to CESAM (UID/AMB/50017 - POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007638), funded by national funds (FCT/MCTES) through PIDDAC and co-funded by the FEDER, within the PT2020 Partnership Agreement and Compete 2020.