Biodiesel production over a catalyst prepared from biomass-derived waste date pits

Ala'a H Al-Muhtaseb; Farrukh Jamil; Lamya Al-Haj; Myo Tay Zar Myint; Eyas Mahmoud; Mohammad N M Ahmad; Ahmad O Hasan; Sikander Rafiq

doi:10.1016/j.btre.2018.e00284

Biodiesel production over a catalyst prepared from biomass-derived waste date pits

Biotechnol Rep (Amst). 2018 Oct 6:20:e00284. doi: 10.1016/j.btre.2018.e00284. eCollection 2018 Dec.

Authors

Ala'a H Al-Muhtaseb¹, Farrukh Jamil^{1

2}, Lamya Al-Haj³, Myo Tay Zar Myint⁴, Eyas Mahmoud⁵, Mohammad N M Ahmad⁶, Ahmad O Hasan⁷, Sikander Rafiq²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Petroleum and Chemical Engineering, College of Engineering, Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Oman.
² Department of Chemical Engineering, COMSATS University Islamabad, Lahore, Pakistan.
³ Department of Biology, College of Science, Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Oman.
⁴ Department of Physics, College of Science, Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Oman.
⁵ Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, College of Engineering, United Arab Emirates University, Al-Ain, United Arab Emirates.
⁶ Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, American University of Beirut, Lebanon.
⁷ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Al-Hussein Bin Talal University, Ma'an, Jordan.

Abstract

Date palms are predominately produced in arid regions and the date pits, or seeds, produced from them are sometimes considered to be a waste. Date pits, ground to powder following an oil extraction, were used to synthesize a renewable heterogeneous catalyst. The green carbon catalyst was modified by an alkaline earth metal oxide (CaO). The oil extracted from date pits was transformed into biodiesel. The biodiesel process was optimized and the optimal yield was 98.2 wt% at a reaction temperature of 70 °C, reaction time ∼120 min, methanol to oil molar ratio of 12 and catalyst loading of 4.5 wt%. The quality of the produced biodiesel meets the standard limits set by regulating agencies (ASTM, EU) which indicates its suitability to be used as a fuel. Thus, it can be concluded that the green carbon catalyst synthesized from waste date pits has a high potential for biodiesel production.

Keywords: Alkaline earth metal oxide; Biodiesel; Biomass-derived fuel; Green catalyst; Waste date biomass.