Study on biodiesel from cotton seed oil by using heterogeneous super acid catalyst SO42−/ZrO2.

ABSTRACT Biodiesel has been drawing a great deal of attention on account of its special environment friendly and fuel properties. However, the cost of biodiesel production is still very high compared with that of traditional fossil fuels. In this study, a heterogeneous super acid catalyst and inedible oil were used to reduce the cost of raw materials. Biodiesel was obtained from cotton seed oil (CSO) and catalyzed by the super acid SO42−/ZrO2, which was prepared by impregnation and characterized by infrared spectroscopy, thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). Different operation parameters of the transesterification of CSO with methanol, such as methanol/oil molar ratio, catalyst amount and loaded mass ratio, reaction time and temperature, were investigated. Under the optimum conditions of methanol to CSO molar ratio of 9:1, 3.5 wt% fresh catalyst (loaded mass ratio is 0.841), 1 h reaction time and reaction temperature of 120 °C, a relatively high biodiesel yield of 98% was obtained. Copyright © 2010 Curtin University of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]