NATURAL PRODUCT RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT ›› 2011, Vol. 23 ›› Issue (1): 94-97.

• Article • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Kinetics of Transesterification of Jatropha Oil with Nano Solid Hydrotalcite Catalyst

邓 欣1,方 真1*,张 帆1,2   

  1. 1Biomass Group, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650223, China; 2College of Chemical Engineering, Xiangtan University, Xiangtan 411105, China
  • Received:2009-05-27 Published:2011-07-20

Abstract:

Mg-Al hydrotalcite nanoparticles were synthesized by coprecipitation using urea as precipitating agent, and subsequently calcined. The calcined particles were characterized by XRD, FT-IR and SEM. They were further used as nanocatalyst to produce biodiesel, and its transesterification kinetics was studied. Results showed that the characteristic XRD diffraction peak d(003) partly disappeared, the symmetric degree of carbonate anions decreased and the particles were agglomerated to form layer structure after the fresh nanoparticles were calcined at 500 oC for 6 h. With the catalyst, the transesterification reaction order was 1.5 with apparent activation energy of 25.92 kJ/mol. At the optimized condition, biodiesel yield was 95.4%.

Key words: solid basic catalyst, biodiesel, transesterification, kinetics