A Review on Biodiesel Synthesis using Iron Doped Catalyst

Abstract

This paper summarized on the history of biodiesel synthesis, biodiesel synthesis using iron doped catalyst. Biodiesel are gaining enormous attention from researches and manufacturers considering its advantages of non-toxic, biodegradable, renewable, and environment-friendly in order to improve the air quality over the atmosphere followed by reducing the global warming problems effectively. Regarding the conventional biodiesel production method, manufacturers generally utilize vegetable oil and alcohols to pass through the transesterification process with the presence of homogeneous base catalyst. The utilization of this types of catalyst lead to another environmental issues that most of the researches are concerning about since the homogeneous catalysts are not reusable and causing separation problems between oil products and the catalyst itself. Therefore, it is highly necessary for the researches and manufacturers to further explore and investigate some catalyst types that are truly feasible for high-scale or industrial usage. Heterogeneous catalysts are known to consists of an identical phase with the reacting medium where the liquid phase contains the feedstock and reaction medium whereas the catalyst retain within the solid phase, hence resolving the separation problems that the homogeneous catalyst would lead to. Recently, researches have introduced the novel method of magnetic properties impregnation of catalytic active component onto the carbonaceous compound. This proposed action tends to provide the advantages of high surface area, separation ease, and preventing the leaching of catalytic active components from the catalyst. Both the potential iron doped carbon catalyst have been extensively researched and studied within this report. Besides, the catalyst properties have discussed further for analyzing the effects of the biodiesel yield that introduced by the chemical and physical properties of various types of catalysts.