Feasibility study of synthesized carbon as catalyst in biodiesel production

The thrust in biofuel production has pushed researchers in finding more of environmentally friendly materials for use as catalyst in the biofuel production process. Commercially available catalyst materials are not sustainable, and they generally incur higher cost of operation. In the present study, locally available native woods species of Manipur, India namely, Yenthou (Arundo donax.L) and Uningthou (Phoebe hainesiana) were exposed at elevated temperature of 400°C and variable exposure time of 90 and 120 minutes for possible use as catalyst during biofuel production. Muffle furnace has been employed for production of catalyst and characterization techniques such as XRD, FT-IR and SEM with EDX are used. XRD analysis shows diffraction peak corresponding to (0 0 2), (1 0 0) and (1 0 1) of the face centered cubic phase at 28.61°, 28.54° and 30.02° respectively while Scherrer equation shows 29.737 nm as average grain size. FT-IR analysis also shows C=C formation from the samples. The SEM & EDX analysis shows good formation of carbon in the catalyst and the weight % of the components are obtained to be 89.18% and 10.82% for C and O respectively. Transesterification of waste cooking oil at 5% (wt%), 10:1, 75°C and 60 minutes for catalyst loading rate, alcohol-to-oil ratio, reaction temperature and reaction time respectively shows conversion rate of 87.4±1.3% with reusability of 3 times.