The transesterification of parsley seed oil using a heterogeneous catalyst prepared from Herring fishbone (HFB) was investigated in this study. The fishbone was calcined at 900oC for 4 h to convert the calcium phosphate in the bone to beta-tricalcium phosphate. The prepared catalyst was then characterized by employing scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis to determine its morphology and elemental composition. The results obtained revealed beta-tricalcium phosphate (β-TCP) as the major constituent of the calcined HFB and also showed the presence of an insignificant portion of hydroxyapatite and calcium oxide. The synthesized heterogeneous catalyst showed good catalytic activity up to five times on reuse. The biodiesel yield of 93% was obtained using 3 wt% of catalyst amount, 65 oC temperature of the reaction, 1.5 h time, and 9:1 alcohol-to-oil ratio. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and Fourier transform infrared spectrometry (FTIR) were utilized to characterize the produced biodiesel. Also, their fuel properties were within the American Society for Testing and Materials set limits.
Keywords: Calcined Herring fishbone; biodiesel; fuel properties; parsley seed oil; transesterification.