Abstract
Herein, used cooking oil (UCO) was upgraded to fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) via methanolysis process using zeolite based eggshell (ZE/ES) composite catalyst. The ZE/ES catalyst was prepared using wet impregnation technique followed by calcination at different temperatures (700–900 °C), and its properties were evaluated by various characterization techniques (BET, TGA/DTA, FTIR, CO2-TPD, XRD, SEM and surface basicity). Optimization of methanolysis of UCO was studied using central composite design. Under the optimum transesterification conditions (at 69.1 °C for 238.8 min using methanol/UCO molar ratio of 9.7:1 with 2.1 wt% catalyst dosage), the maximum FAME content was 93.7% when composite catalyst synthesized by loading 2 g of zeolite with 5 g of eggshell and calcined at 800 °C (2ZE/ES-800) was utilized. The remarkable performance of 2ZE/ES-800 could be attributed to its high basic strength (1181.1 μ mol/g) and dominance of the CaO on its surface. Reusability study showed that the 2ZE/ES-800 catalyst could be reused for five successive cycles with no significant decrease in catalyst activity.
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