Preliminary Study on the Use of Magnetize Fe3o4-Zro2 Catalyst For Biodiesel Production

Plant oil as second generation biofuel especially waste cooking oil has been found to simplify the shortcomings experienced by its predecessors. However, high free fatty acid content represents the major limitation which requires the waste cooking oil to undergo a two-step process to produce biodiesel. As an alternative, in this study, Fe3O4-ZrO2 catalysts were developed for simultaneous esterification–transesterification of waste cooking oil to biodiesel. The magnetic function of Fe3O4 has the advantage in the separation process, avoid the loss of catalyst and increase its reusability. First, Fe3O4 was synthesized using co-precipitation method where FeSO4.7H2O and FeCl3.6H2O were combined in deionized water to form black precipitate. Then, the precipitate was dried at 40°C for 24 hours. The Fe3O4-ZrO2 catalysts were further synthesized using various Fe3O4 loadings (10- 30 wt.%) via incipient wetness impregnation method, dried at 120 °C followed by calcination at 700 °C for 5 hours. All catalysts were characterized using Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA) for
degradation behaviour and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) to detect the functional groups presence. It was found that the highest biodiesel yield was achieved by 20Fe-Zr catalyst using 12:1 methanol to oil ratio and 10wt% catalyst loading at 60°C for 7 hours.