Preparing Activated Carbon from Palm Shell for Biodiesel Fuel Production
Achanai Buasri, Nattawut Chaiyut and Chaiwut Nakweang* Author for corresponding; e-mail address: achanai130@gmail.com
Volume: Vol.38 No.4 (OCTOBER 2011)
Research Article
DOI:
Received: -, Revised: -, Accepted: -, Published: -
Citation: Buasri A., Chaiyut N. and Nakweang C., Preparing Activated Carbon from Palm Shell for Biodiesel Fuel Production , Chiang Mai Journal of Science, 2011; 38(4): 572-578.
Abstract
Palm shell is a cheap and abundant agricultural by-product in many tropical countries, particularly Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. Several techniques including thermal activation (physical activation) and chemical activation have been successfully developed to convert palm shell into an activated carbon (AC). One technique is to use an activating agent such as Ca(NO3)2.4H2O. The objective of this work was to optimize the process for biodiesel fuel production from palm stearin using activated carbon supported calcium oxide. Transesterification of palm stearin with menthanol was investigated under a heterogeneous catalysis system. The reaction was studied by various amount of metal loading in activated carbon. The supported alkali earth metal catalysts, Ca(NO3)2/AC showed almost the same activity under the optimized reaction conditions compared to calcium oxide catalyst (CaO). The catalysts were characterized, using thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), scanning electron microscope (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and surface area analyzer. The results indicated that the Ca(NO3)2/AC had relatively low surface area, compared to CaO. The suitable conditions for heterogeneously catalyzed transesterification of Ca(NO3)2/AC and CaO were the menthanol/oil molar ratio of 20, temperature of 60°C and reaction time of 4 h, with 10.5 and 6% (w/w) catalyst to oil ratio for Ca(NO3)2/AC and CaO, respectively.