Potential of using ceramics wastes as a solid catalyst in biodiesel production

Reusing waste products is one of the milestones of progress toward environmental sustainability; producers can add value by reusing waste products. This study reports that ceramics wastes (CWs) are suitable raw materials for preparing a solid-base catalyst for biodiesel production. This study synthesized biodiesel from soybean oil using transesterification over a CWL-800-2. CWL-800-2 can be used directly for biodiesel production without being further dried or thermal pretreated, avoiding the usual activation of solid catalysts at high temperature. The effects of the calcination temperature and duration, methanol/oil ratio and catalyst amounts on the conversion are also reported in this paper. The solid base catalyst was highly active, air-insensitive and can be reused for at least four cycles\without loss of activity. The catalysts were characterized using XRD, FE-SEM, FTIR, BET and the Hamtnett indicator method. (C) 2018 Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.