Programme Book - UPM - Universiti Putra Malaysia

P15Cerithedia obtusa SHELL AS A POTENTIAL SOLIDCATALYST FOR BIODIESEL PRODUCTIONN.N.F. Mohd Noor, N.A.R Che Mohamad, E.N Muhamad*Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPMSerdang, Selangor, MalaysiaCorresponding author: erneenm@science.upm.edu.myThe depletion of fossil fuel sources and environment concern issues has urged manyresearchers to seek for new alternative renewable energy sources such as biodiesel.Biodiesel is an environmentally viable fuel consisting of methyl esters of long chainfatty acids produced by transesterification of vegetable oils or animal fats withmethanol. In this study, supported solid base heterogeneous catalyst developed fromwaste blunt snail shell (cerithedia obtusa) was used to catalyze the transesterificationof palm oil to biodiesel. The prepared catalysts were characterized by using X-rayDiffraction (XRD), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller Surface Area Measurement (BET), FieldEmission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM) and Inductively Coupled PlasmaAtomic Emission Spectrometry (ICP-AES). The product (biodiesel) obtained wasanalyzed by using Gas Chromatography (GC-FID). The CaO/Al 2 O 3 catalyst hasshown better biodiesel yield of 98.25% compared to CaO/SiO 2 catalyst (58.82%) atreaction condition of 65°C, 5 h, 20:1 (MeOH:oil) and 3wt% of catalyst loading. Underthe same reaction conditions, unsupported-CaO catalyst only shows inferior biodieselyield (19.28%). The effects of various reaction variables such as the catalyst loading,methanol to oil molar ratio and reaction time on the conversion of palm oil were alsoinvestigated. The experimental result indicates CaO derived from blunt snail shell hasa potential as raw material to be used as an economical catalyst for biodieselproduction.30 |16 th Industrial Chemistry Seminar: Chemistry- A Passport to a Brighter Future