OPTIMIZATION OF HETEROGENEOUSLY CATALYZED BIODIESEL PRODUCTION FROM AN OIL BLEND USING RSM

ABSTRACT

Biodiesel is now a more environmentally friendly fuel than conventional fuel, and has gained high recognition in our world today. It can be produced by the transesterification of an alcohol and a plant oil or animal fat in the presence of a catalyst. In this study, the development of an efficient bifunctional heterogeneous catalyst from pig bones and water melon rind to catalyze the transesterification of fat oil 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. Box-Behnken Design was used to establish the experimental runs and a maximum yield of 80.04% was achieved at a temperature of 70oC, with 3wt% catalyst, methanol-oil ratio of 8.5:1 and at a reaction time of 155min. RSM was used for optimizing the process and it exhibited a great accuracy with high R2 values 0.9784.