Sulfated Zirconia Catalyzed Biodiesel Production from Acid Oil Containing High Free Fatty Acids

Abstract

Biodiesel fuel has shown great promise as an alternative to petro-diesel fuel. Biodiesel production is widely conducted through esterification and transesterification reaction, catalyzed by homogeneous or heterogeneous catalysts. In the present endeavour, sulphated zirconia has been prepared using microwave method and characterized by using XRD, FT-IR, BET surface area, SEM and acidity measurement. The utility of synthesized catalyst is demonstrated in catalytic biodiesel production from acid oil feed stock. The influence of different parameters such as the catalyst concentration, oil: methanol ratio, operation time on the yield and properties of the produced biodiesel were studied. The produced biodiesel was characterized by using gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy (GC-MS) and NMR.

Keywords: Heterogeneous acid catalyst, sulfated zirconia, acid oil, biodiesel