Biodiesel production via stearic acid esterification over mesoporous ZrO2/SiO2 catalysts synthesized by surfactant-assisted sol-gel auto-combustion route

Hala R. Mahmoud, Sahar A. El-Molla and Marwa M. Ibrahim

Renewable Energy, 2020, vol. 160, issue C, 42-51

Abstract: Biodiesel production from the esterification of stearic acid with ethanol catalyzed by the mesoporous ZrO2/SiO2 catalysts which successfully synthesized by surfactant-assisted sol-gel auto-combustion method. These catalysts were characterized by various physico-chemical techniques such as XRD, BET surface area measurement, HR-TEM and NH3-TPD. The mesoporous catalyst prepared with cationic surfactant (ZrSiOC) showed a maximum BET surface area and pore volume. Interestingly, the ZrSiOC catalyst exhibited the largest acidity value among all catalysts. The results showed that the mesoporous ZrO2/SiO2 catalysts prepared with cationic (ZrSiOC) and non-ionic (ZrSiOT) surfactants demonstrated higher stearic acid conversion than those with anionic (ZrSiOS) or without surfactant (ZrSiO). Significantly, the ZrSiOC and ZrSiOT catalysts exhibited the highest conversion of 69.2% and 63.1% at 120 °C after 3 h, respectively. Additionally, it was observed that the conversion increased extremely with increasing the reaction temperature giving a maximum conversion of 76.9% at 125 °C by using the most active catalyst (ZrSiOC). Interestingly, the ZrSiOC catalyst displays suitable recycling as it kept performance of 72.5% after five recycle runs without significant lack in performance. Moreover, the kinetic study confirmed that esterification follows pseudo first-order equation.

Keywords: Biodiesel; Esterification; Kinetics; Acidity; Mesoporosity; Surfactant (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148120308983
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:160:y:2020:i:c:p:42-51

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2020.06.005

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 ().