Transesterification of vegetable oil to biodiesel using heterogeneous base catalyst

Hak Joo Kim, Bo Seung Kang, Min Ju Kim, Young Moo Park, Deog Keun Kim, Jin Suk Lee, Kwan Young Lee

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articlepeer-review

673 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Biodiesel produced by the transesterification of vegetable oils (VOs) is a promising alternative fuel to diesel regarding the limited resources of fossil fuel and the environmental concerns. In this work, an environmentally benign process for the production of biodiesel from VOs using heterogeneous catalyst was developed. Na/NaOH/γ-Al2O3 heterogeneous base catalyst was firstly adopted for the production of biodiesel. A study for optimizing the reaction conditions such as the reaction time, the stirring speed, the use of co-solvent, the oil to methanol ratio, and the amount of catalyst, was performed. The Na/NaOH/γ-Al2O3 heterogeneous base catalyst showed almost the same activity under the optimized reaction conditions compared to conventional homogeneous NaOH catalyst. The basic strength of Na/NaOH/γ-Al2O3 catalyst was estimated and the correlation with the activity towards transesterification was proposed.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)315-320
Number of pages6
JournalCatalysis Today
Volume93-95
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2004 Sept 1
EventSelections from the Presentations of the 3rd Asia-Pacific Congress - Dalian, China
Duration: 2003 Oct 122003 Oct 12

Keywords

  • Biodiesel
  • Heterogeneous base catalyst
  • Methyl ester
  • Transesterification
  • Vegetable oil

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Catalysis
  • Chemistry(all)

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