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Biodiesel Production with Nanotubular Sodium Titanate Doped withPotassium as a Catalyst
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 January 2016
Abstract
In the present work, sodium titanate nanotubes doped with potassium weresynthesized by the Kasuga method and tested as catalysts for biodieselproduction. Potassium was added to the nanotubes in order to increase theirbasicity and, consequently, improve their performance in the transesterificationof soybean oil with methanol. In the synthesis, the NaOH:KOH molar ratio waschanged from 9:1 to 7:3 in order to increase potassium loadings in the obtainednanotubular solids. Synthesized catalysts were characterized by N2physisorption, powder XRD, scanning electron microscopy (SEM-EDX), transmissionelectron microscopy (TEM), FT-IR, FT-Raman and CO2temperature-programmed desorption (CO2-TPD). Obtained results showedthat sodium trititanate nanotubes containing 1.5 wt. % of potassium wereobtained when 10 M alkali solution with NaOH:KOH molar ratio of 9:1 was used. Inthis case, the proportion of sodium and potassium in the synthesized materialwas similar to that used in the synthesis. An increase in the proportion of KOHto 20 and 30 molar % in the NaOH-KOH solutions used in the synthesis allowedobtaining titanate nanotubes with larger potassium loadings (3.2 and 3.3 wt. %,respectively). As it was expected, potassium addition to the sodium titanatenanotubes resulted in an increase in the amount of medium and strong basicsites. Potassium-containing nanotubes showed higher catalytic activity in thetransesterification reaction than the pure sodium counterpart used as areference. The best results were obtained with the samples containing 3.2-3.3wt. % of potassium where a biodiesel yield of about 94-96 % was obtained at 80°C and 1 h reaction time.
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