Biodiesel fuel production with solid catalysis in a fixed-bed reactor

Abstract

Nowadays, the use of heterogeneous catalysts for biodiesel production is an attractive solution because it can be separated more easily from the reaction products (biodiesel and glycerine). In this work, KOH/ZrO₂ and KOH/mordenite catalysts were used as a solid base catalyst for biodiesel production via the transesterification of refined palm oil with methanol using a fixed-bed reactor. Both catalysts showed good activity at a methanol-to-oil molar ratio of 15:1, a reaction temperature of 60 ℃, 12 wt% of the catalyst (based on the weight of the vegetable oil), and a flow rate of 11 ml/min. The results demonstrated that the KOH/ZrO₂ gave a high percentage of methyl ester (95.29%) at a residence time W/F = 0.013 g cat/g (g feed.h), whereas the KOH/mordenite gave higher reusability of the catalyst. The leaching of active components and the regeneration of the catalyst have been studied. In addition, characterizations of the prepared catalysts and the biodiesel were done using several techniques.