Methyl ester production from palm fatty acid distillate using sulfonated glucose-derived acid catalyst

Ibrahim M. Lokman, Umer Rashid, Yun Hin Taufiq-Yap and Robiah Yunus

Renewable Energy, 2015, vol. 81, issue C, 347-354

Abstract: A highly potential heterogeneous solid acid catalyst derived from a carbohydrate precursor was successfully developed and applied for biodiesel production from palm fatty acid distillate (PFAD). The catalyst was synthesized by sulfonating the incomplete carbonized D-glucose using concentrated sulfuric acid to produce a sulfonated glucose-derived acid catalyst. The catalyst underwent a detailed characterization analysis in terms of its functional groups of active sites, morphological structure, thermal stability, surface area and density of acid sites. For the catalytic activity test, the sulfonated glucose-derived acid catalyst was used to esterify PFAD which contained around 85 wt.% free fatty acids (FFA). Furthermore, it demonstrated a 95.4% conversion of FFA to fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs) with 92.3% of FAME yield under the following optimum condition: catalyst loading of 2.5 wt.%, methanol-to-PFAD molar ratio of 10:1, reaction temperature of 75 °C and the reaction time was 2 h. It can be deduced from the results that a sulfonated glucose-derived acid catalyst has a high potential to esterify high FFA feedstocks, especially PFAD, to produce low cost biodiesel.

Keywords: Sulfonated glucose-derived acid catalyst; PFAD; Esterification; Surface area; Biodiesel production (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096014811500227X
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:81:y:2015:i:c:p:347-354

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2015.03.045

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 ().