INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON RECENT ADVANCES IN SCIENCES AND TECHNOLOGY - Kuala Lumpur - Malaysia (2019-02-20)

Production of Biodiesel from Waste Cooking Oil by Using Natural Zeolite and Chicken Eggshell Ash as Heterogeneous Catalyst
Biodiesel was usually produced by transesterification vegetable oil in the presence of a catalyst. Use of waste cooking oil in biodiesel production will reduce the disposal problem and raw material cost while use of heterogeneous catalyst will ease product separation and allow reusing reducing energy demand. Deriving heterogeneous catalyst from waste will further reduce operation cost. One such waste is chicken eggshells which the main component is calcium carbonate. This compound can be calcined at high temperature to form calcium oxide (CaO) and carbon dioxide (CO2). CaO is a highly potential base catalyst, which is less soluble in methanol. The study of CaO as solid-base catalyst had been conducted by several researchers which yielded more than 90% methyl ester. Generally, heterogeneous catalysts suffer some disadvantages, such as catalyst deactivation caused by poisoning and leaching. For CaO in particular, it is susceptible to impurities such as CO2 and water (H2O) which may block its active site. CaO will react with CO2 and H2O to form calcium carbonate and calcium hydroxide which reduce the catalytic activity of CaO. These disadvantages of CaO catalyst can be overcome by using support. One possible support is natural zeolite. Zeolite is a mesoporous compound which contains various metal oxides and can be utilized to support base and transition metal. Adding support allows the catalyst to disperse on the surface and inside of the zeolite, thus improving the catalytic activity of the catalyst mixture. The aim of study was to discover the variable which produced the best yield by using the mixture of natural zeolite and chicken eggshell ash at fixed weight ratio of 3:1 in biodiesel production using treated waste cooking oil (TWCO) as feedstock. TWCO is waste cooking oil treated with activated carbon to reduce the high content of free fatty acid (FFA). Chicken eggshells were calcined at the temperature of 900°C for 2 hours. Effect of the methanol to TWCO molar ratio, reaction time, catalyst weight, and reaction temperature were investigated in this work. The properties of biodiesel such as methyl ester content, density, kinematic viscosity, and flash point were evaluated and compared to the European Standard (EU 14214). The maximum yield of 96,8% was obtained by using methanol to TWCO molar ratio of 12:1 at 65°C for 150 minutes, in the presence of 6%(wt) of loaded catalyst. The result of this study showed that the addition of natural zeolite could enhance the catalytic activity. Therefore, it is highly potential as low-cost catalyst in producing biodiesel. Keywords: calcination, chicken eggshells ash, heterogeneous catalyst, natural zeolite, transesterification, treated waste cooking oil
Mr. Okta Bani, Dr. - Iriany, Miss - Meilia, Miss Nike Taruna, Dr. - Taslim