Development of solid catalyst for the transesterification of palm oil

Abstract

Nowadays, the use of heterogeneous catalysts for biodiesel production is an attractive solution because it can be separated more easily from the reaction products (biodiesel and glycerine). In this work, KOH/Montnorillonite catalyst was used as a solid base catalyst for biodiesel production via the transesterification of refined palm oil with methanol using a batch reactor. Catalysts showed good activity at a methanol-to-oil molar ratio of 15:1, a reaction temperature of 60 ℃, 9 wt% of the catalyst (based on the weight of the vegetable oil). The calcination temperature was also studied in this work. The calcined catalyst, which calcined in the range of temperature of 300-600 ℃, provided a low activity as for comparison to uncalcined catalyst. The leaching of active components and the regeneration of the catalyst have been studied. In addition, characterizations of the prepared catalysts and the biodiesel were done using several techniques.