Kanemite from rice husk ash as an efficient, cheap and recoverable base catalyst for production of biodiesel

Abstract

In this work, Kanemite was prepared from rice husk ash and used as a heterogeneous base catalyst for production of biodiesel from sunflower oil. The catalyst was characterized by PXRD, FESEM and FT-IR. The transesterification conditions, such as the catalyst dosage, molar ratio of methanol to oil, reaction temperature and reaction time were investigated and optimized. The results revealed that by a catalyst loading of 5 wt. %, methanol to oil ratio of 24:1, reaction temperature of 65 °C and reaction time of 4h, conversion of biodiesel reached 97.2%. Moreover, the catalyst could be reused up to five cycles under the optimum reaction conditions without significant loss of product yield.

Keywords

• biodiesel
• transesterification
• rice husk ash
• kanemite