Kinetics study of waste cooking oil epoxidation with peroxyacetic acid using acid catalysts

Abstract

Waste conversions into added-value products have been observed in many fields. Bio plasticizers can be prepared with epoxidation of waste cooking oil using glacial acetic acid, hydrogen peroxide, and acid catalysts. Kinetics study of epoxidized waste cooking oil is reported in this paper. The rate constants of the epoxidation using sulfuric acid catalyst were attained about 1.4 x 10-7, 6.7 x 10-7, 6.1 x 10-7, 5.6 x 10-7, 1.9 x 10-7 L/mol/s, and energy activation was obtained at 8.45 kcal mol-1 at range temperature of 40°C to 80°C. The research resulted the most effective catalyst is sulfuric acid followed by hydrochloric acid and nitric acid with the rate constants of 5.6 x 10-7, 3.9 x 10-7 and 2.5 x 10-8 L/mol/s, respectively. In order to confirm that the epoxidized waste cooking oil was generated by identifying epoxide production and cleavage of epoxide ring, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy analysis of the products was conducted.