PRODUCTION OF BIODIESEL FROM WASTE COOKING OIL USING CHICKEN MANURE

ABSTRACT

This study developed two heterogeneous catalysts from chicken manure for the synthesis of biodiesel from waste cooking oil (WCO) with 4.63% free fatty acid. For the preparation of the catalysts, chicken manure was dried and calcined at 900oC to produce the chicken manure (CM) catalyst. While to produce the doped chicken manure (DCM) catalyst, calclcined CM was doped with nickel(ii)nitrate using wet impregnation method. Both catalysts were characterized using Brunauer-Emmett and Teller (BET) analysis, fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Xray diffraction (XRD), X-ray fluorescence (XRF), scanning electron microscope (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray (EDX). Response surface method (RSM) optimization and artificial neural network (ANN) modeling were carried out to elucidate the interaction effect of significant process variables on biodiesel yield. The catalysts characterization revealed that both catalysts had high surface area (286.322m2 /g and 314.443m2 /g) and pore size (1.853nm and 2.123nm) of which the DCM catalyst had the higher values. Also, the DCM catalyst acted as a bi-functional catalyst as both basic and acid oxides (Cl, AL2O3, MgO, and SiO2) were present as the major component while the CM catalyst acted as a base catalyst as CaO was the major component. The maximum biodiesel yields were 89.5 and 93.75 % for CM and DCM catalysts respectively. The maximum yield using both catalysts were obtained at same parameters at a reaction temperature of 55oC, catalyst loading of 1 wt.%, reaction time of 90 minutes and methanol to oil ratio of 6:1. The RSM model was found to be very adequate in modeling biodiesel production with R2 values of 0.9464 and 0.9156. Although, ANN was a better modeling tool with R2 values of 0.99669 and 0.99566.