Water Hyacinth Derived Mixed-Oxide Heterogeneous Catalyst for Biodiesel Production

Abstract

Homogeneous catalytic system for biodiesel synthesis is no longer justifiable by industries in the near future; mainly due to ecological issues related to the conventional homogeneous catalytic system like problems associated with separation of the catalyst from the product, reusability, and its release into the environment after washing the catalyst from the product. The present study is focused on the viability of environmentally benign heterogeneous catalyst synthesis from water hyacinth (WH) a renewable aquatic plant considered hazard for other useful aquatic crops. The synthesized catalyst was characterized by fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), powder X-ray diffractograms (XRD), energy dispersive analysis of X-ray (EDAX), brunauer-emmett-teller (BET), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and hammett indicator analysis. The catalyst demonstrated a superior catalytic performance achieving fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) conversion of 97.1 % in 3 h. The catalyst could be reused efficiently with FAME conversion of more than 80 % after the third cycles. The present work reveals the possibility of developing heterogeneous catalyst from an aquatic weed for FAME synthesis, reducing the total production cost of biodiesel synthesis.