A comparative study of KOH/Al2O3 and KOH/NaY catalysts for biodiesel production via transesterification from palm oil

Krisada Noiroj, Pisitpong Intarapong, Apanee Luengnaruemitchai and Samai Jai-In

Renewable Energy, 2009, vol. 34, issue 4, 1145-1150

Abstract: The transesterification of palm oil to methyl esters (biodiesel) was studied using KOH loaded on Al2O3 and NaY zeolite supports as heterogeneous catalysts. Reaction parameters such as reaction time, wt% KOH loading, molar ratio of oil to methanol, and amount of catalyst were optimized for the production of biodiesel. The 25wt% KOH/Al2O3 and 10wt% KOH/NaY catalysts are suggested here to be the best formula due to their biodiesel yield of 91.07% at temperatures below 70°C within 2–3h at a 1:15 molar ratio of palm oil to methanol and a catalyst amount of 3–6wt%. The leaching of potassium species in both spent catalysts was observed. The amount of leached potassium species of the KOH/Al2O3 was somewhat higher compared to that of the KOH/NaY catalyst. The prepared catalysts were characterized by using several techniques such as XRD, BET, TPD, and XRF.

Keywords: Transesterification; Biodiesel; Al2O3; NaY; Solid base catalyst; Leaching (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148108002607
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:34:y:2009:i:4:p:1145-1150

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2008.06.015

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().