Synthesis and application of barium tin oxide-reduced graphene oxide nanocomposite as a highly stable heterogeneous catalyst for the biodiesel production

Abstract

The potential decline in crude oil reserves and rising awareness of the detrimental environmental impacts of consuming fossil fuels promoted the creation of alternative approaches to transform waste biomass into biofuels. This research provided a simple approach for synthesizing barium tin oxide (BTO) and its decoration over the reduced graphene oxide (RGrO) to manufacture BTO@RGrO as an efficient catalyst in the process of biodiesel production from waste cooking oil (WCO). The prepared BTO and BTO@RGrO nanocomposite were characterized by Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Energy-Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDX), BET (Brunauer, Emmett, and Teller), Temperature Programmed Desorption of NH3/CO2 (NH3/CO2- TPD), and Power X-ray diffraction (XRD). The response surface methodology (RSM) based central composition designs (CCD) was employed to optimize the influence factors, including reaction temperature (40–90 °C), reaction duration (10–50 min), catalyst quantity (1–5 wt%), and methanol to oil (MeOH/Oil) molar ratio (5−25). The optimal performance of biodiesel generated was acquired over BTO@RGrO nanocomposite at the reaction temperature of 68.83 °C, reaction duration of 27.95 min, catalyst quantity of 3.21% by weight, and MeOH/Oil molar ratio of 14.93, which led to biodiesel generation with a 97.03% purity. The finding revealed that the BTO@RGrO nanocomposite could be effectively utilized as a stable heterogeneous solid catalyst under ideal reaction conditions with outstanding catalytic performance.