Biodiesel synthesis by TiO2-ZnO mixed oxide nanocatalyst catalyzed palm oil transesterification process.

Biodiesel is a promising alternating environmentally benign fuel to mineral diesel. For the development of easier transesterification process, stable and active heterogeneous mixed metal oxide of TiO2-ZnO and ZnO nanocatalysts were synthesized and exploited for the palm oil transesterification process. The synthesized catalysts were characterized by XRD, FT-IR, and FE-SEM studies for their structural and morphological characteristics. It was found that TiO2-ZnO nanocatalyst exhibits good catalytic activity and the catalytic performance was greatly depends on (i) catalyst concentration (ii) methanol to oil molar ratio (iii) reaction temperature and (iv) reaction time. A highest 98% of conversion was obtained at the optimum reaction parameters with 200 mg of catalyst loading and the biodiesel was analyzed by TLC and (1)H NMR techniques. The TiO2-ZnO nanocatalyst shows good catalytic performance over the ZnO catalyst, which could be a potential candidate for the large-scale biodiesel production from palm oil at the reduced temperature and time.