Transesterification of Waste Cooking Oil Catalysed by Crystalline Copper Doped Zinc Oxide Nanocatalyst

Abstract

I S S N 2321-807XV o l u m e 12 N u m b e r 12 J o u r n a l o f A d v a n c e s i n C h e m i s t r y Transesterification of Waste Cooking Oil Catalysed by Crystalline Copper Doped Zinc Oxide Nanocatalyst AbstractBiodiesel has its unique position in the field of renewable energy as alternate fuel to diesel due to fuel price, energy requirement and petroleum crisis. In this study, biodiesel was produced from Waste Cooking Oil (WCO) using Copper doped Zinc Oxide (CZO) nanocatalysts. The synthesized Copper doped Zinc Oxide nanocatalysts were characterized by X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and High Resolution Transmission Electron Microscope (HRTEM). Design of experiment was framed using Taguchi method to limit the experiments and to find the optimum reaction conditions. The effect of process parameters such as oil-to-methanol ratio (O/M), catalyst type, catalyst concentration, temperature and time on the transesterification reactions using characterized Copper doped Zinc Oxide nanocatalyst were investigated. The 4% (weight /weight) nanocatalyst concentration, 1:5 Oil to methanol molar ratio at 60°C temperature and 40 minutes of reaction time were found to be optimum, in which the maximum biodiesel yield of 98 % (w/w) was obtained. Hence it was determined that nanocatalysts exhibited good catalytic activities on biodiesel production from Waste Cooking Oil (WCO). Keywords:Biodiesel, Waste Cooking Oil, Copper doped Zinc Oxide, Transesterification. IntroductionFossil fuels such as petroleum, coal and natural gas are the major sources of increased pollution level. Studieshave shown that biodiesel being less polluting, non-toxic and biodegradable; it can be used directly in most diesel engines without much engine modifications. Biodiesel is commonly produced by transesterification of lipids, animal fats, grease and waste cooking oils [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13].Catalyst plays an important role in transesterification reactions. Homogeneous catalysts result in the formation of soap which makes more complication in the reaction and also in the product separation. Heterogeneous catalysts has its own benefits such as ease of separation, easy recovery and can potentially be re-used. Finally, all these benefits leads to a reduced production cost [1,2,3,6]. Due to the nanodimension and morphological structure, the nanocatalyst composites provides higher catalytic activity [14,15]. This research work aims at conversion of WCO into biodiesel using the transesterification process with CZO nanocomposite as heterogeneous catalysts. Since nano particles have a large surface-to-volume ratio compared to bulk materials, they are attractive to use as catalysts for the transesterification reactions. Materials and methods MaterialsCupric sulphate, Zinc sulphate, Sodium carbonate were the chemicals used for synthesizing nanocatalyst. Methanol was used for transesterification reactions. All chemicals were of analytical grade purchased from Merck, India. Transesterification was carried out using Waste Cooking Oil, Copper doped Zinc Oxide nanoca...