Recent Developments in Catalysts for Biodiesel Production Applications

Abstract

The world’s most urgent problem today is the quick depletion of energy resources, which necessitates research into alternative energy sources in order to meet the world’s explosive growth in energy demand. Among other renewable energy sources, biodiesel holds promise for meeting energy demand at a low cost through a variety of processes. In the biodiesel industry, sophisticated catalysts have recently grown in popularity for their ability to activate esterification and transesterification processes. The goal of this chapter is to give a general overview of catalyst developments, including their benefits and drawbacks in the biodiesel production process. In particular, we present a comparison of various homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts. We found that nanocatalysts hold the most promise for the production of biodiesel.