Studies on Biodiesel Production using Eggshell Based Catalysts

Abstract

There is a huge consumption of fossil fuel owing to population explosion which increases the concentration of greenhouse gases and chances of global warming. In order to attain sustainability development of our environment, alternate renewable energy sources such as biodiesel has been considered. Biodiesel is nontoxic, biodegradable with low emission of SOx and NOx gases. Almost 95% of biodiesel generated from vegetable oil as feedstock and this requires vast agricultural land area. Also, this increases biodiesel carbon emission via its life cycle. Waste Cooking Oil (WCO) is an appropriate choice. For transesterification of WCO to form FAME, different kinds of catalysts have been employed and eggshells was one of the suitable heterogeneous catalysts, which has 95-98% CaCO3 and forms CaO under thermal condition. The study utilized waste eggshells which are rich source of calcium carbonate as an alternate to the conventional catalysts which are synthesized by chemical reaction. Moreover, waste cooking oil was chosen to reduce the overall cost of production of biodiesel. In India, commercialization of biodiesel is hindered by the raw materials cost and hence cost reduction of raw materials served as the motivation for this study. Eggshells were found to have good catalytic properties when they were subjected to physical, chemical and biological modifications and hence a comprehensive comparison study was performed on chicken eggshells. newlineThis research work deals with development of eggshell based catalysts namely Eggshell (ES), Calcined Eggshell (CES), Eggshell newlineCoconut pith (ESCP), and Immobilized Lipase Eggshell (ILES) catalysts and compared. The SEM, FTIR, XRD and BET analysis of all newlinexi newlineES--based catalysts results has been found satisfactory. Among them, the ILES catalyst shows better performance for biodiesel manufacture. The study utilized waste eggshells which are rich source of calcium carbonate as an alternate to the conventional catalysts which are synthesized by chemical reaction.