MODIFIED KAOLINITE CLAY AS CATALYST FOR BIODIESEL PRODUCTION FROM WASTE COOKING OIL

📄 Project Abstract

The challenges of continual depletion, economic crisis and environmental issues of the petroleum fuels have attracted the scientists' interest to seek for alternatives to fossil fuels.Biodiesel is the alternative to petrol diesel because; it has similar physicochemical properties to petrol diesel. However, biodiesel has not been competing favourably well economically with petrol diesel due to high cost of production.In this work, biodiesel was produced from waste cooking oil (WCO) using modified kaolinite clay as a heterogeneous acid catalyst. Kaolinite clay sourced from Kankara town in Katsina State was beneficiated, calcined and acidified to produce the catalyst. The catalyst was characterised using X-ray Fluorescence(XRF), X-ray Diffraction(XRD) and Scanning Electron Microscopy(SEM).The effect of the following variables namely: Silica to alumina mass ratio, reaction temperature, methanol to oil ratio, reaction time and catalyst dosage were studied. Important fuel properties such as ...