Na-Ce-modified-SBA-15 as an effective and reusable bimetallic mesoporous catalyst for the sustainable production of biodiesel

Abstract

With the purpose to compete with the homogeneous catalytic biodiesel production, a highly efficient bimetallic solid catalyst with high exposed surface, high basicity, and reusable throughout several reaction cycles, was developed by doping SBA-15 with sodium and cerium in different concentrations. The catalyst with 5 wt% of Na and 20 wt% of Ce showed good structural ordering and had the highest basicity due to the presence of a large amount of medium and strong sites compared to the other materials. It was effectively used as a solid base catalyst for biodiesel production from sunflower oil and absolute methanol. The highest FAME content (98.9 wt%) was achieved under optimum conditions of 40:1 methanol/oil molar ratio, 10 wt% catalyst loading, 60 °C, stirring speed of 600−700 rpm and 180 min. Further, this material was reused for five consecutive runs, obtaining FAME contents greater than 90 % in each one of them.