Effect of Chemical Pre-Treatment on the Catalytic Performance of Oil Palm EFB Fibre Supported Magnetic Acid Catalyst

The development of heterogenous catalysts using renewable materials has received wide attention. A heterogenous catalyst has been a preferred choice as it evades the disadvantages of homogeneous catalysts, nevertheless, heterogenous catalysts has limited activity and a longer separation process. The current study emphasises the preparation of a new magnetic catalyst using oil palm empty fruit bunch (EFB) fibre as a carbon-based support material. The effect of different alkaline pre-treatments over the methyl ester conversion rate were investigated. The catalyst preparation parameters were studied by using the single factor optimisation approach, including the fibre loading, impregnation time, calcination temperature, and calcination time. Their effects in the esterification of oleic acid were investigated in this study. The optimisation study shows that the Na2CO3-treated(T)EFBC magnetic catalyst had the highest esterification rate of 93.5% with 7 g EFB fibre loading, a 2 h impregnation time and a calcination temperature of 500 ffi C for 2 h. The catalyst possessed a good acidity of 3.5 mmol/g with excellent magnetism properties. This study showed that the catalysts are magnetically separable and exhibited good stability with 82.1% after five cycles. The oil palm EFB supported magnetic acid catalyst indicates it as a potential option to the existing solid catalysts that is economical and environmentally friendly for the esterification process.