Biodiesel enhancement in the presence of solid acid catalyst

In this study, heteropoly acid catalysts (tungstosilicic acid, molybdophosphoric acid, tungstophosphoric acid) with different amounts (10, 30, and 50 %) were loaded on the spherical carbon support obtained from glucose by using the hydrotherml synthesis method. The synthesized catalysts were characterized by XRD, SEM-EDX, XRF, N2 adsorption/desorption, TGA, and FTIR. As a result of the characterization studies; it has been observed that spherical carbon-supported heteropoly acid catalysts obtained from glucose by the hydrothermal method have been successfully synthesized. The esterification of oleic acid and methanol was realized at 30:1 oil/alcohol, 5% catalyst weight at 100oC for 6 hours with all catalysts. The highest conversion of 50% HPW/CS is 64.45%. In order to compare the Few-HPW/CS obtained by loading iron metal and H3PW12O40 on the CS catalyst by the wet impregnation method, and the Fe-HPW/CS catalyst obtained by directly loading Fe metal with the direct wet impregnation method on 50% HPW/CS catalyst. The synthesized catalysts were characterized by XRD, SEMEDX, XRF, N2 adsorption/desorption, and FT-IR. All two catalyst conversion values were obtained as a 95.3 and 94 % at given reaction conditions, respectively. Although conversion values were found similarly, Fe-HPW was chosen as the optimum catalyst due to the low surface area and accumulation of spherical carbons. Reusability studies of this catalyst have been carried out for 5 runs and the conversion has decreased to 83%. A small decrease in catalytic activity was observed