Javed, F., Rizwan, M., Asif, M. et al. (5 more authors) (2022) Intensification of biodiesel processing from waste cooking oil, exploiting cooperative microbubble and bifunctional metallic heterogeneous catalysis. Bioengineering, 9 (10). 533. ISSN 2306-5354
Abstract
Waste resources are an attractive option for economical the production of biodiesel; however, oil derived from waste resource contains free fatty acids (FFA). The concentration of FFAs must be reduced to below 1 wt.% before it can be converted to biodiesel using transesterification. FFAs are converted to fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs) using acid catalysis, which is the rate-limiting reaction (~4000 times slower than transesterification), with a low conversion as well, in the over biodiesel production process. The study is focused on synthesizing and using a bifunctional catalyst (7% Sr/ZrO2) to carry out esterification and transesterification simultaneously to convert waste cooking oil (WCO) into biodiesel using microbubble-mediated mass transfer technology. The results reveal that a higher conversion of 85% is achieved in 20 min using 7% Sr/ZrO2 for biodiesel production. A comprehensive kinetic model is developed for the conversion of WCO in the presence of a 7% Sr/ZrO2 catalyst. The model indicates that the current reaction is pseudo-first-order, controlled by the vapor–liquid interface, which also indicates the complex role of microbubble interfaces due to the presence of the bifunctional catalyst. The catalyst could be recycled seven times, indicating its high stability during biodiesel production. The heterogeneous bifunctional catalyst is integrated with microbubble-mediated mass transfer technology for the first time. The results are unprecedented; furthermore, this study might be the first to use microbubble interfaces to “host” bifunctional metallic catalysts. The resulting one-step process of esterification and transesterification makes the process less energy-intensive and more cost-efficient, while also reducing process complexity.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022 by the authors. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
Keywords: | biodiesel; waste cooking oil; transesterification; bifunctional catalyst; microbubble technology |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Engineering (Sheffield) > Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number ENGINEERING AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL EP/N011511/1 Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council EP/S031421/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 08 Nov 2022 11:59 |
Last Modified: | 08 Nov 2022 11:59 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | MDPI AG |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.3390/bioengineering9100533 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:193047 |