Synthesis of carbohydrate-derived solid acid catalysts for biodiesel production from palm fatty acid distillate
High concerns on the energy security and uncontrolled emissions of greenhouse gas had forced all countries to tum towards the utilization of environmentally-friendly and renewable biofuels. In this work, the usage of inexpensive and non-edible oil feedstock such as palm fatty acid distillate (PF...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2016
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/91300/1/FS%202016%2015%20-%20IR.pdf |
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| Summary: | High concerns on the energy security and uncontrolled emissions of greenhouse gas
had forced all countries to tum towards the utilization of environmentally-friendly and
renewable biofuels. In this work, the usage of inexpensive and non-edible oil feedstock
such as palm fatty acid distillate (PF AD) for the biodiesel production is recommended.
A highly potential heterogeneous carbon-based solid acid catalyst derived from
carbohydrates was successfully developed and applied for biodiesel production. The
carbohydrate-derived solid acid catalysts were synthesized by sulfonation of
incomplete carbonized carbohydrates using concentrated sulfuric acid. The prepared
catalysts underwent a detailed characterization analyses in terms of its active site's
functional groups, morphological structure, thermal stability, surface area and density
of the acid sites. The catalytic activity of all prepared catalysts had demonstrated the
highest conversion of PFAD to biodiesel under the following reaction condition:
catalyst loading of 2 wt.%, methanol-to-PFAD molar ratio of 10:1, reaction
temperature of75 "C and the reaction time was 3 h.
In order to improve the esterification reaction process, an efficient microwave batch
reactor was fabricated. A study on a microwave-assisted acceleration of esterification
rate of PFAD using glucose-derived solid acid catalyst was carried out. It was found
that the radio frequency of microwave energy could enhance the reaction rate faster
than the conventional heating technique. The results revealed the potential of
microwave irradiation; which offers faster esterification rate with advantages of
enhancing the FAME yield and reducing the production cost.
Another study was carried out to investigate the effect of high temperature on the
esterification reaction of PF AD. The supercritical reactor was used to heat up the
reaction system up to sub- and super-critical conditions. The results from the
optimization of reaction variables were; reaction temperature of 290 cC, methanol-to-
PFAD molar ratio of 6: 1, catalyst amount of 1 wt.% and reaction time of 5 min. The
esterification of PFAD in supercritical methanol with the presence of glucose- and
starch-derived solid acid catalysts at this condition resulted 95.4% and 97.3% ofF AME
yield, respectively - both catalysts yielded significantly higher conversion compared to un-catalyzed supercritical methanol reaction with the ability to be recycled up to 10
times.
As a conclusion, it revealed that the sulfonated carbohydrate-derived acid catalysts had
high potentials by showing high catalytic activity with better stability and were suitable
for the biodiesel production from low-quality feedstock with high FFA content,
especially PF AD. The improvement on the reaction rate by applying the invented
microwave-assisted and supercritical methanol reactions showed positive outcome -
which in tum, proved the fast reaction with high FAME yield. |
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