Transesterification of Rendered Chicken Fats Catalyzed By Waste Chicken Eggshells For Biodiesel Production

To make the biodiesel competitive with petroleum diesel, cheap and abundant materials can be utilized as a catalyst and waste oils can be used as resources. in this research study, the potential of waste chicken eggshells was used as a catalyst to produce biodiesel from the rendered chicken fats (rcf). the calcium methoxide catalyst was prepared by calcining the waste eggshells at 900 c in air for 4 h followed by treatment with methanol under reflux condition. the physico-chemical properties of the prepared catalyst were characterized using the x-ray diffraction (xrd) analysis, brunner-emmet-teller (bet), field emission scanning electron microscopy (fe-sem), and temperature programmed desorption of carbon dioxide (co2-tpd). two-step process including, esterification and transesterification were employed to convert the rcf to fatty acid methyl ester (fame). esterification pretreatment with ferric sulfate successfully reduced 75.1% of the ffa content in rcf which enables high biodiesel production. under the optimal reaction condition, the highest conversion of biodiesel was found to be 90.04% at 1:15 oil to methanol molar ratio, 3 wt% catalyst loading, and 2 h reaction time at 65 c. the catalyst was successfully used for 4 consecutive cycles with less than 2 mg/kg of ca was detected in the product.