The photo is sourced from misis.ru
The aim of the research was obtaining a new type of the so-called heterogeneous catalyst playing a key role in the industrial production of biodiesel – a mixture of fatty acid esters, the source of which is vegetable oils or animal fats. The catalyst is used for the esterification reaction, in which vegetable oil reacts with monohydric alcohols (methanol, ethanol). The reaction results in formation of biodiesel and glycerin.
The authors of the article in the Asian Journal of Chemistry were the first who used, as a catalyst, wollastonite – a white mineral with a brownish tint, belonging to silicates. Its distinguishing feature is a close bond of silicon and hydrogen. Wollastonite was synthesised by auto-combustion, the fuel for which was L-alanine, a colourless crystalline substance with the properties of amino acids. To evaluate the catalytic ability of the resulting wollastonite, a group of scientists conducted an interesterification reaction (exchange of the structural elements of fats) of soybean oil with methanol. After the reaction, biodiesel, glycerol and catalyst were separated using a laboratory centrifuge.
“To optimise the percentage of catalyst used in the biodiesel production, we ran a series of experiments with different amounts of catalyst. As a result, we came to the conclusion that the alkali metal oxide and silica in the composition of wollastonite helped in the biodiesel (82.6%) production in less time and at a lower temperature,” the MISIS University quotes in the release Rajdan Chowdhary, one of the authors of the study.
Biodiesel is one of the most popular clean fuels. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), global demand for biodiesel between 2015 and 2020 tripled (from 2.5 billion to 7.6 billion litres), and this figure is supposed to reach 22.1 billion litres by 2026.
