Synthesis of Biodiesel using the Mg/Al/Zn Hydrotalcite/SBA-15 Nanocomposite Catalyst

Abstract

Biodiesel production is an enchanting and eccentric pathway for the reduction of use of fossil fuels and is procured from biologically available renewable sources such as oils and fats. A novel Mg/Al/Zn-based hydrotalcite/SBA-15 composite material having a high catalytic activity was developed and investigated for the transesterification of vegetable oil. The rationally developed composites were systematically characterized and assessed in the transesterification of soybean oil in the presence of methanol. The physicochemical evaluation of the nanocomposites demonstrated the influence of Zn in the textural characteristics, density of the basic sites, and successively the catalytic activity. The catalytic efficiency of the MAZ-x/SBA-15 composite could be linked with the basic site density determined by the temperature-programmed desorption of CO2. Among all the composites used, the MAZ-1/SBA-15 nanocomposite showed the highest activity for biodiesels, with a yield of around 90% under economical reaction conditions. The catalytic studies conferred that the fatty acid methyl ester yield is significantly influenced by various experimental conditions such as the catalyst molar ratio, reaction temperature, pressure, and contact time. It was also found that the incorporation of hydrotalcite into SBA-15 pore channels can enhance the catalyst efficiency and stability of the nanocomposite. Moreover, under mild reaction conditions, a remarkably stable catalytic performance was achieved for more than 200 h of time on stream with no catalyst deactivation.

Guanine‐La complex supported onto SBA‐15: A novel efficient heterogeneous mesoporous nanocatalyst for one‐pot, multi‐component Tandem Knoevenagel condensation–Michael addition–cyclization Reactions

“…The amounts of surface area, pore volume and pore size distribution of La@guanine@SBA‐15 were determined by applying the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) method and Barrett–Joyner–Halenda (BJH) models and, then, collected in Table . The values of these parameters are much lower as compared to that of the SBA‐15 mesoporous . This can be duo to the fact that these value parameters which are closely related to the complex loading confirmed the successful incorporation of metal nanoparticles on SBA‐15 heterogeneous surfaces.…”

“…shows the low‐angle XRD pattern of La@guanine@SBA‐15. The lattice parameter on SBA‐15 which can be indexed as the (100), (110), (200) reflections corresponds to p6mm space group of the two‐dimensional hexagonal lattice . Decreasing in the diffraction intensity of these three peaks for the catalyst indicated successful formation of La complex in the SBA‐15 hexagonal channels.…”

“…Also, it was found that the position of the d 100 peak in the catalyst shifted to lower values, which are due to the shrinking pore size, and reduced the order of homogeneity of the pores in comparison to SBA‐15. This may correspond to the re‐condensation reactions of the silica with lanthanum nanoparticles in the pore channel …”

Advances in nano-catalysts based biodiesel production from non-food feedstocks

“…This advantage has resulted in the recent development of a wide range of solid acid catalysts to obtain biodiesel from various feedstocks. They include zeolites (Jeon et al, 2019;Osatiashtiani et al, 2017), clays (Bálsamo et al, 2019), metal oxides and mixed metal oxides (Pandit and Fulekar, 2019;Prabu et al, 2019), supported acids (Vieira et al, 2017;Aziz et al, 2017), sulphated metal oxides in particular sulphated zirconium oxide (H ≥ -14.52) (Shi et al, 2017;Elimbinzi et al, 2018;Rabee et al, 2017) and sulphated titanium oxide (H ≤-14.52) (Gardy et al, 2016(Gardy et al, , 2017, heteropoly compounds (Kurhade et al, 2019), sulfonated carbon based materials including carbon nanofibers; carbon nanotubes; biochar; amorphous carbon; graphene oxide; sugar; and waste (Guan et al, 2017;Tran et al, 2016;Baig et al, 2016;Tan et al, 2019;Bora et al, 2018;Rahimzadeh et al, 2018;Wu et al, 2019) and cation exchange resin (Zhang 2016;Fu et al, 2016).…”

Optimizing the Surface Properties of MgO Nanoparticles Towards the Transesterification of Glycerol to Glycerol Carbonate

“…Glycerol, a global market governing commodity molecule that has significant importance in the personal care products and pharmaceutical applications. Generally, glycerol obtained as a side product during the biodiesel synthesis via the transesterification of vegetable oils . During the biodiesel synthesis crude glycerol is abandoned in huge amount as a waste.…”