Biodiesel production from transesterified yellow grease by ZSM-5 zeolite-supported BaO catalyst: process optimization by Taguchi’s experimental design approach
Adeyinka Sikiru Yusuff, Moses Oluwafemi Onibonoje
Abstract
Abstract Methanolysis of yellow grease (YG) was performed to synthesize its corresponding methyl ester (YGME) using BaO loaded on ZSM-5 (BaO/ZSM-5) as a heterogeneous base catalyst that was prepared via metallic solution hydrolysis method and characterized using N 2 adsorption–desorption (BET), surface basicity, XRD, TGA/DTA, SEM, FTIR and Raman techniques.### The Taguchi design approach was utilized to optimize the transesterification process factors, and among the parameters studied, calcination temperature was found to have a significant influence on YGME yield. At 70 ℃ for 3 h, a YGME yield of 95.9 $$\pm 0.94$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>±</mml:mo> <mml:mn>0.94</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> % was obtained using a methanol/YG molar ratio of 15:1 and 1 g (2 wt.% of YG used) of BaO/ZSM-5 sample calcined at 700 ℃. The BaO/ZSM-5 catalyst was reused six times with only a 15% decrease in activity.