Utilization of Waste Enamel Venus Shell as Friendly Environmental Catalyst for Synthesis of Biodiesel

Abstract

Calcium oxide (CaO) is one of the most promising heterogeneous alkali catalysts since it is cheap, abundantly available in nature, and some of the sources of this compound are renewable (waste material consisting of calcium carbonate (CaCO3)). In this study, the waste enamel venus shell was used as the raw material for CaO catalyst. The calcination of bio-waste was conducted at 900 °C for 2 h. The raw material and the resulting CaO catalyst were characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray fluorescence (XRF), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and the Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) method. The effects of reaction variables such as reaction time, microwave power, methanol/oil molar ratio, and catalyst loading on the yield of biodiesel were investigated by gas chromatograph-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). From the experimental results, it was found that the CaO catalysts derived from waste material showed good catalytic activity (the conversion of oil of nearly 93%, a very similar catalytic activity with laboratory CaO) and had high potential to be used as biodiesel production catalysts in transesterification of Jatropha Curcas oil with methanol.