ABSTRACT
Given that biodiesel is more environmentally friendly than conventional fuel, it has become crucial in the world we live in today. It can be produced by the transesterification of an alcohol oil in the presence of a catalyst. In this study, the development of an efficient bifunctional heterogeneous catalyst from waste marble tiles and plantain peduncle to catalyze the transesterification of a tenary oil mixture of waste vegetable oil, waste palm oil, and waste animal fat for the production of biodiesel is the main goal.
The catalyst was prepared by wet impregnation method, the precursors were impregnated with Nickel nitrate and barium chloride. The produced catalyst was characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) coupled with energy dispersive X-ray (EDX), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, X-ray fluorescence (XRF), thermo-gravimetric analysis and Brunauer, Emmett and Teller (BET) analysis. The XRD analysis showed high composition of and minerals like SiO2, Al3O2, K2O and CaO and the presence of both basic and acidic sites. The BET result showed a surface area of 68.421 m2/g.
Box-Behnken Design was used to establish the experimental runs and a maximum yield of 80.04% was achieved at a temperature of 65oC, with 3wt% catalyst, methanol-oil ratio of 8.5 and at a reaction time of 150min. RSM, ANN and ELM models were used for optimizing the process. The exhibited great accuracy with high R2 values (0.9784, 0.9924 and 0.9874) respectively.
