Valorization of Waste Cooking Oil into Biodiesel over Heteropolyacids Immobilized on Mesoporous Silica — A Kinetic Study

Abstract

Biodiesel production from WCO with methanol was carried out over tungstophosphoric acid immobilized on SBA-15 by grafting technique, at 60°C. After PW immobilization, the morphology of the support remained.

In order to optimize the conditions, the influence of various reaction parameters, the nature of alcohol and the amount of initial free fatty acid on the transesterification of WCO in the presence of PW-NH2-SBA-15 catalyst were carried out. The esterification/transesterification of WCO with propanol and ethanol led to lower concentration of fatty acid esters than with methanol.

When different amounts of free fatty acids (palmitic acid) were added to the WCO, a slight increase on the concentration of FAME was observed.

In order to study the catalytic stability of PW-NH2-SBA-15 catalyst, four consecutive batch runs were carried out.