Synthesis, characterization and catalytic activity of carbon-silica hybrid catalyst from rice straw

The hybrid-carbon catalyst has been studied because of its promising potential to have high porosity and surface area to be used in biodiesel production. Silica has been used as the support to produce hybrid carbon catalyst due to its mesoporous structure and high surface area properties. The chemical synthesis of silica-carbon hybrid is expensive and involves more complicated preparation steps. The presence of natural silica in rice plants especially rice husk has received much attention in research because of the potential as a source for solid acid catalyst synthesis. But study on rice straw, which is available abundantly as agricultural waste is limited. In this study, rice straw undergone pyrolysis and functionalized using fuming sulphuric acid to anchor –SO3H groups. The presence of silica and the physiochemical properties of the catalyst produced were studied before and after sulphonation. The catalytic activity of hybrid carbon silica acid catalyst, (H-CSAC) in esterification of oleic acid with methanol was also studied. The results showed the presence of silica-carbon which had amorphous structure and highly porous. The carbon surface consisted of higher silica composition, had lower S element detected as compared to the surface that had high carbon content but lower silica composition. This was likely due to the fact that Si element which was bonded to oxygen was highly stable and unlikely to break the bond and react with –SO3H ions. H-CSAC conversions were 23.04 %, 35.52 % and 34.2 7% at 333.15 K, 343.15 K and 353.15 K, respectively. From this research, rice straw can be used as carbon precursor to produce hybrid carbon-silica catalyst and has shown catalytic activity in biodiesel production. Rate equation obtained is also presented.