Kinetics of Corn Oil Methanolysis Reaction over Na-Modified Mesoporous Gamma Alumina Catalyst

The study of chemical kinetics is essential in predicting reaction rates and mechanisms of chemical processes; thus, kinetics study is crucial with the introduction of a new catalyst. in this study, mesoporous gamma-alumina doped naoh catalyst is employed in the methanolysis of corn oil to evaluate the kinetics parameters. the catalyst is characterized using ftir, n2-sorption, fesem and basic back titration analyses. from the basic back titration result, an increase in basic sites is observed with increasing naoh doping. the fesem and ftir results revealed na2o incorporation into the alumina. the high k-value of 0.01561 min^-1 in the kinetics study is linked to a high level of unsaturated ffa in the corn oil. similarly, a high level of ea (67.7 kj mol^-1) implies that the methanolysis of corn oil is chemically controlled. furthermore, the large pre-exponential factor (a) (8.6 ˣ 10^8 min^-1) points to a high probability of successful collisions, justifying the high biodiesel yield. from the thermodynamics study, the positive value for the enthalpy implies the methanolysis reaction is endothermic, while the negative value for the entropy proposes an associative mechanism, suggesting a reversible reaction. at the same time, the positive gibb’s free energy suggests a non-spontaneous reaction, signifying the external energy is required for the reaction to progress.