Transesterification of Soybean Oil to Biodiesel Catalyzed by Waste Silicone Solid Base Catalyst

Abstract

AbstractThis study uses waste silicone as a low‐cost material to prepare the solid base catalyst using Li2CO3 as an activating agent through a solid state reaction for the biodiesel production. A sample of waste silicone is converted into SiO2 powder by being heated at 800 °C for 4 h. The results show that a highly active solid catalyst could be obtained by mixing and well grinding SiO2 powder with Li2CO3 calcined in air for 4 h. The prepared solid base catalysts are characterized by XRD, BET, SEM and FTIR for the physical and chemical properties. In the present study, the biodiesel is synthesized from soybean oil through a transesterification reaction catalyzed by the solid base catalyst. Under the optimal reaction conditions of methanol/oil molar ratio 12:1, 6% (wt/wt oil) catalyst amount, and a reaction temperature of 62 °C for 3 h, there is a 99.04 ± 0.9% conversion to the biodiesel from soybean oil. The waste silicone as the solid base catalyst demonstrates excellent catalytic activities and stable catalytic activities in transesterification reactions.