Triacetin production using SiO2-H3PO4 catalysts derived from bamboo leaf biomass waste for esterification reactions of glycerol and acetic acid

Abstract

Increasing the demand for renewable fuels especially for biodiesel has the effect of increasing by products during biodiesel production. Therefore, the efforts made to make biodiesel by products in the form of glycerol become more economic value, then further processing is carried out into biofuel additives. One of the biofuel additives that can be synthesized from glycerol is triacetin. In this study, the production of triacetin compounds was carried out through an esterification reaction using calcined SiO2-H3PO4 catalyst originating from bamboo leaf biomass waste so that glycerol conversion, concentration and selectivity of the best triacetin products from various reaction variables were obtained. The esterification process is carried out by reacting glycerol and acetic acid with a mass ratio of glycerol: acetic acid which is 1 : 9 at a temperature of 100 ± 5°C to produce the main product triacetin. The influence of various process variables such as catalyst type, catalyst weight, and reaction time on glycerol conversion was observed in this study. The best conditions produced in this study were the highest conversion of 100% glycerol, the concentration of triacetin products 18.53%, and selectivity of triacetin products 22.84% with catalyst type SiO2-H3PO4 1 : 2 (M/M), catalyst weight 5% from glycerol weight, reaction time of 4 hours, and stirring speed of 300 rpm.