Potential waste from palm empty fruit bunches and eggshells as a heterogeneous catalyst for biodiesel production

Abstract

Biodiesel is one of the potential alternative energies produced from a variety of vegetable oils. The utilization of a CaO/SiO2 catalyst generated from eggshell and palm empty fruit bunch (PEFB) waste for biodiesel production from waste cooking oil was investigated. The optimum silica yield extracted from PEFB was 68.2% using 10% NaOH (w/v) at 80°C for 1 h. Methanol with a mol ratio of 14 to waste cooking oil was used. The presence of a silica support in the CaO catalyst increased the yield of biodiesel from 78% to 96%. Three runs of the catalyst led to only a 1% reduction in biodiesel yield. The utilization of activated PEFB as a support showed a potential result with a biodiesel yield of 83%. The prospective heterogeneous catalysts were also characterized by using XRD, SEM, BET and FT-IR. The developed CaO/SiO2 stands out as a promising catalyst for biodiesel production due to the utilization of abundant and cheap waste materials. Moreover, a significant yield of biodiesel was obtained using the catalyst; hence, it is feasible to be developed on a larger scale.