Musa balbisiana colla banana flower derived magnetic heterogeneous nanocatalyst for cleaner biodiesel production from jatropha oil

Abstract

Banana flower has been used to create a very effective magnetically separable basic heterogeneous nanocatalyst for the production of sustainable biodiesel using jatropha oil. The potentiality of the innovative catalyst was assessed through the study performed by fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectrometer (XPS), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET), and thermogravimetric (TG) analysis. The magnetic nanocatalyst appeared as quasi spherical and core/shell structure, with a mean size of 19.47 nm. The catalyst's significant calcium (3.5%) and potassium (32.4%) contents indicates that the catalyst is quite basic in nature. With a catalyst load and methanol to oil ratio of 6 wt% and 9:1 respectively at 60 °C, the synthesized basic nanocatalyst produced 97.2 ± 1.15% biodiesel yield in 60 ± 2 min. It was discovered that the catalyst's basicity and surface area were 0.612 mmol/g and 64.4 m2 g−1 respectively. The transesterification reaction proceeded via pseudo-first order kinetics with an activation energy (Ea) of 33.25 kJ mol−1. The transesterification process exhibits endergonic and non-spontaneous behaviour as suggested by the values of entropy change (ΔS) and enthalpy change (ΔH) as 20.785 and −4.43 kJ mol−1 K−1 respectively. The catalyst showed promising catalytic stability and reactivity up to 3rd cycle with sufficient magnetization value of 17.43 emu/g and potassium content of 22.38% which endorsed biodiesel yield of 91.5% at 3rd cycle.