Ying Li,Shengli Niu,Yanan Hao,Wenbo Zhou,Jun Wang,Jiangwei Liu
In this work, the catalytic performance of the mesoporous SrTi 1- x Fe x O 3 ( x = 0.05, 0.10, 0.15 or 0.20) for biodiesel production from palm oil with a high acid value is investigated. The physicochemical properties of the catalysts are revealed by various characterization methods, including XRD , N 2 adsorption-desorption, XPS , Raman, EPR, SEM-EDS, and CO 2 /NH 3 -TPD. Fe doping results in many oxygen vacancies in the perovskite structure , which increases the electron density of the active sites on the surface and promotes the polarization of the perovskite structure, thus improving the catalytic activity of the catalyst. The most oxygen vacancies and the best catalytic performance are observed in the SrTi 0.85 Fe 0.15 O 3 catalyst, where the FAME yield of 97.52% is achieved with the catalyst concentration of 5 wt % and methanol to oil molar ratio of 18:1 at 150 °C for 3 h. Meanwhile, the catalyst maintains a FAME yield of 83.59% for the fourth reused cycle. Also, the catalyst exhibits strong resistance to FFAs, where the FAME yield is still 93.58% even with oleic acid addition of 12 wt % to show the capability in catalyzing the simultaneous esterification and transesterification .
Ying Li,Shengli Niu,Jun Wang,Wenbo Zhou,Yongzheng Wang,Kuihua Han,Chunmei Lu
A pure mesoporous SrTiO 3 with a honeycomb pore structure is synthesized by the sol-gel method and applied to catalyze transesterification of palm oil with methanol for the biodiesel production . The catalyst is characterized by XRD , CO 2 /NH 3 -TPD, N 2 adsorption-desorption, SEM-EDX, Raman and XPS to reveal its catalytic performances. The highest FAME yield of 93.14% is achieved in transesterification with the molar ratio of methanol to oil of 15:1 and catalyst concentration of 6 wt % at 170 C for 3 h. Besides, the catalyst is highly tolerant of FFAs and moisture, where the FAME yields of 83.80% and 86.50% are achieved even with the oleic acid and water addition of 10 wt % and 5 wt %. Meanwhile, the catalyst is found to be an effective catalyst for the simultaneous esterification and transesterification. The molecular simulation results show that the Ti sites are more easily attacked by FFAs and the Sr active sites are thus retained for the adsorption of methanol to catalyze transesterification, which explains the bifunctionality of the catalyst.