ABSTRACT

Due to population growth and advancements in industry, there is a constant increase in the requirement for energy, and as the demand for energy has grown so have the adverse environmental effects of its production.  In this study, biodiesel was produced by transesterification of waste cooking oil (WCO) using iron-doped solid catalyst produced from cow horn. This study was aimed at optimizing and producing biodiesel from waste cooking oil using a heterogenous solid catalyst made from cow horn. Cow horn was doped with iron via wet impregnation method and was characterized using BET (Braunner-Emmet-Teller), XRF (x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy), XRD (x-ray diffraction analysis) and FITR (fourier transform infra red spectroscopy). Response Surface Methodology (RSM) based on Box-Behnken Design (BBD) was used to study and optimize the effect of reaction conditions which were reaction time, methanol to oil ratio, and amount of catalyst on the transesterification process. The optimum condition for Waste cooking oil transesterification to biodiesel was obtained at a reaction time of 75min, catalyst concentration of 5grams and methanol to oil ratio of 18:1 giving a yield of 89.6% at a constant reaction temperature of 60°C.