Effect of Reaction Temperature on Biodiesel Production from Chlorella vulgaris using CuO/Zeolite as Heterogeneous Catalyst

Abstract

Human needs for fossil energy increase every year. Biodiesel is the main way to resolve this world problem. Biodiesel produces from vegetable oil. But then, the alternative way came from the uses of microalgae in Chlorella vulgaris type causes by its simplicity of growing. In the other hand, this microalgae known for its high lipid content by considering several parameter such as light intensity, medium nutrition, pH and also salinity. Lipid content will be extracted by using Bligh-Dryer method which will be reacted with methanol along transesterification. Beside, there come another matter which is the utilization of homogeny catalyst. The difficulty of separation is the main matter so then biodiesel need to be washed in case normalizing the pH and this process will decrease the quality of biodiesel. To resolve this problem, we'll be using a heterogeneous catalyst, zeolite, with ability to catalyst the process. Zeolite is easier to separate from the biodiesel so there will not be needed washing process. Heterogeneous catalyst work as well as homogeneous. Variation implemented on transesterification included reaction temperature of 40°C, 60°C, and 80°C. Reaction time, catalyst percentage and the solvent amount remain steady on 4 hours, 3% and 1:400. Complete best result obtained at 60°C with the yield of 36,78%. Through this, heterogeneous catalyst CuO/Zeolite proved to have a capability for replacing homogeneous catalyst and simplify the production of biodiesel particularly in separation step.