Abstract

Due to uncontrolled consumption of fossil fuel it is necessary to use alternative resources as renewable energy. Among all the available liquid fuels biodiesel has drawn attention for producing less emissions and having less aromatic contents than diesel and because it can also be obtained from inferior grade feedstocks. Since the various uses of fats and oils have increased, a significant amount of waste animal fat and used edible oil is generated every year. In this work, we produced biodiesel from littered edible oil fraction (LEOF) via hydrolysis followed by catalytic esterification. Nearly 90% free fatty acids (FFA) content was achieved at 275 °C, after 45 min during hydrolysis and linoleic acid (C18:2) was observed to be the highest component. Compared to refined soybean oil (SBO) the reaction rate was accelerated by the auto-catalytic behavior of free fatty acids (FFA) in littered edible oil fraction (LEOF). For catalytic esterification, S-TiO₂/MCM-41 catalyst was directly synthesized and characterized by using XRD, SEM, NH₃-TPD and Brunauer Emmett Teller (B.E.T). The parameters such as; SO₄⁻² content, TiO₂ loading and calcination temperature were varied to get optimum free fatty acids (FFA) conversion. Fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) conversion was 99.29% using 1% S-TiO₂/MCM-41 catalyst at 240 °C whereas 86.18% was observed with 3.5% catalyst at 180 °C with 20 min. Thus, using S-TiO₂/MCM-41 catalyst in esterification via hydrolysis would be a better option for treating low quality feedstocks. View Full-Text