Gholamreza Moradi - Catalyst Research Center, Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran
forud Moazezi - Catalyst Research Center, Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran

Heterogeneous catalysts are now being tried extensively for biodiesel synthesis. In this work, a new solid catalyst has been developed and optimized to produce biodiesel from soybean oil. The main advantage of solid catalysts is that it requires lower investment costs, since no separation steps for methanol/catalyst and glycerin/catalyst are needed. The calcinations temperature and experimental conditions were investigated and optimized by response surface methodology in experimental design. The optimized conditions found to be 60 wt% of BaO loading as catalyst on the γ-Al2O3 as support , calcination temprature 545°C and 12:1 molar ratio methanol/oil.

Biodiesel, heterogeneous base catalysts, transesterificatin, methylester