Biodiesel production from waste cat fish oil using heterogeneous catalyst from cat fish born: A viable waste management approach, and ANN modeling of biodiesel yield

Abstract

Biodiesel from vegetable or animal feedstock can serve as a suitable source for renewable energy. This study utilized heterogeneous catalyst obtained from fish bone for biodiesel production from raw cat fish waste (CFW) oil. The CFW oil yield obtained using wet reduction extraction method was 96.85 %. The heterogeneous catalyst was prepared by calcination at 600 °C, for 4 h and characterized using SEM-EDX. Catalyst characterization showed suitable elements that can improve the catalytic activity. Physiochemical characterization results showed that viscosity of CFW oil (48.782 mm2/s), reduced to 9.391 mm2/s in the produced biodiesel. Similarly, after transesterification free fatty acid (3.593 mg/KOH/Kg) and acid value (7.186 mg/KOH/Kg) of CFW oil reduced to 1.48 mg/KOH/Kg and 2.96 mg/KOH/Kg, respectively, in the biodiesel. Finding from the Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) Spectrum of the raw CFW oil showed the presence of –OH and was assigned to the axial deformation of water molecule. However, the –OH group disappeared in the FTIR spectrum of biodiesel due to the transesterification process. This observation is consistent with the findings for moisture contents of raw CFW oil (0.073 %) and biodiesel (0.00 %), which showed disappearance of water after transesterification. The biodiesel yield was further modeled using three algorithms (Scaled conjugate gradient, Bayesian regularization and Levenberg maraquardt) of the artificial neural network (ANN). It was evident that the predictions from the Scaled conjugate gradient algorithm were comparable to the experimental responses. Finally, transesterification of raw CFW oil using heterogeneous catalyst from fish bone, was a cost-effective approach for biodiesel production.