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A catalytic transfer hydrogenation of castor oil using glycerol-based is a process of adding hydrogen to the castor oil to produce hydrogenated castor oil with the addition of 10% Pd/C as the catalyst and glycerol as a hydrogen donor. The reaction occurred at the reaction temperature of 178°C for an hour. To prove whether glycerol can be one of the hydrogen donors like limonene that is commonly used, the research started by using pure glycerol as the hydrogen donor and as a control to determine the protocol. A direct heating aparatus connected with a reflux system was used for this experiment. The result from FTIR along with the melting point shows the formation of hydrogenated castor oil from this reaction. The increment in melting point value and the absence of C=C peak (1655.79 cm−1) from FTIR spectrum shows that the catalytic transfer hydrogenation successfully occurred. The melting point of the hydrogenated castor oil is 65°C and the melting point of castor oil is -7°C. Therefore, it was proven that, the glycerol can be used as the hydrogen donor for the castor oil for a catalytic transfer hydrogenation reaction.

The catalytic and non-catalytic pyrolytic conversion kinetics of palm kernel shell (PKS) with untreated (as received) and H2SO4-treated coal bottom ash as catalyst were investigated in this study. Flynn-Wall-Ozawa (FWO) and distributed activation energy model (DAEM) isoconversional kinetic models were exploited to evaluate the kinetic parameters. The study was conducted using thermogravimetric analysis at 10, 20, 30, and 50 °C/min heating rates. The activation energy (Ea) and pre-exponential factor (A) for non-catalytic PKS decomposition for DAEM ranged from 74.39 to 217.05 kJ/mol and 4.77E+01 to 1.99E+14 s−1 at different conversions while for the untreated ash, the ranges were 103.84–402.53 kJ/mol and 7.35E+03–1.04E+29 s−1. In the decomposition with treated ash, Ea and A were 81.79–191.07 kJ/mol and 1.61E+02–1.20E+12 s−1 for 7 wt% ash and 74.41–137.35 kJ/mol and 4.91E+03–4.53E+08 s−1. Values of Ea and A obtained for FWO followed the same pattern and are in close agreement with that obtained using DAEM. The use of 10 wt% acid-treated ash reduced the activation energy compared with the non-catalytic process by about 33.05% while the untreated ash increased the activation energy. The kinetic parameters were determined satisfactorily using the first-order reaction mechanism.