Post-harvest waste to value-added materials: Musa champa plant as renewable and highly effective base catalyst for Jatropha curcas oil-based biodiesel production
Bidangshri Basumatary, Sujata Brahma, Biswajit Nath, Siri Fung Basumatary, Siri Fung Basumatary, Bipul Das, Sanjay Basumatary, Sanjay Basumatary
Abstract
In the present work, different catalysts were prepared from the post-harvest stem, rhizome and fruit peel of Musa champa plant and applied in biodiesel production from Jatropha curcas oil. The calcined Musa champa peel (CMCP-550) catalyst contained the highest amount of K (47.49 wt%) and exhibited the highest basicity of 1.25 mmol g −1 , which in turn showed the best efficacy for the reaction in comparison to other prepared catalysts of this work. The CMCP-550 catalyst with a surface area of 6.848 m 2 g −1 could produce a maximum biodiesel yield of 98.27 % at the optimum reaction conditions (ORCs) of 9:1 MRMO (molar ratio of methanol to oil) and 5 wt% of catalyst dose at 65 °C in 10 min. The CMCP-550 catalyzed reaction exhibited good activation energy of 54.256 kJ mol −1 with a turnover frequency (TOF) of 14.15 h −1 .