Noor Yahida Yahya

Pilot Evaluation of Calcium Titanate Catalyst for Biodiesel Production from Waste Cooking Oil

The world is gradually moving toward a severe energy crisis due to depletion of fossil fuels. Biodiesel is one of the technically and economically feasible options to solve the aforesaid problem. However, the overall costs of biodiesel production associated with the increasing market price of its feedstock clearly influence the profitability of the process. Therefore, biodiesel production has been directed toward waste materials as feedstock such as waste cooking oil (WCO). On the other hands, WCO is dealing with high free fatty acids (FFA) contents which gives a significant effect to the transesterification reaction, resulting in a lower biodiesel production. Therefore, a viable catalyst is needed for wide industrial usage in biodiesel synthesis from WCO. CaO is one of the promising heterogeneous catalyst for the transesterification reaction. However, CaO is deals with some limitations that need to overcome. This research paper deals with the synthesis of heterogeneous calcium titanate (CT) catalyst from calcium oxide (CaO) and titanium precursor by a sol-gel method for pilot evaluation in biodiesel production. CT catalyst was produced under different calcination temperature (200 °C, 400 °C, 600 °C, 800 °C). The synthesized catalysts were evaluated for performance in transesterification reaction of methanol with WCO. BET surface area, XRD, and SEM were measured to correlate the activity with the structural features of the catalysts. The results exhibited that the calcination temperature of 400 °C is more preferable in terms of technical and economic feasibility. A biodiesel yield of 80.0 % was observed with a methanol to oil molar ratio of 15:1 and 1 wt.% of CT catalyst loading amount in 1 h at 65 °C which is comparative with commercial CaO catalyst calcined at 400 °C (60.0 % of biodiesel yield) at the same reaction conditions.

Effect of Calcination Temperature on Catalyst Surface Area of Ca Supported TiO2 by Sol-Gel Method for Biodiesel Production

Currently, the major concern in production of biodiesel is to find a new catalyst which can produce high quality of biodiesel at lower costs. In this study, titania supported CaO catalyst was prepared by a so-gel method. The characterization of catalyst was done using Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) model method to characterize the surface area of the catalyst. Further, the ability of the catalyst for transterification reaction of waste cooking oil (WCO) with methanol was also assessed. The effect of calcination temperature on the catalyst to the transesterification reaction was examined to investigate the relation between catalyst calcination temperature and percentage yield (% yield) of biodiesel production.

Removal of Reactive Black 5 Dye Using a New Polyacrylamide Grafted Cellulose Flocculant Derived from Pandan Leaves: Optimization Study

In this study, performance of polyacrylamide grafted cellulose flocculant derived from Pandan leaves to treat reactive black 5 (RB5) dye from aqueous solution were investigated. Response surface methodology (RSM) and Box-Behnken design (BBD) of experiment were employed to identify the optimum condition for chemical oxygen demand (COD) reduction in RB5 dye. The optimization was based on three operating variables; initial dye concentration, flocculant dosage and pH. The optimum condition for COD reduction was achieved at initial dye concentration of 0.03 g/l with flocculant dosage of 0.06 g, at pH 11.72. Under this condition, the reduction of COD was achieved up to 54.24%. Linear and quadratic effects of flocculant dosage and pH are the most significant in affecting the degree of flocculation efficiency. The coefficient of determination (R2) of 81.77% for percentage reduction of COD level confirms that the models used in predicting the degree of flocculation efficiency has a very good agreement with the experimental results.

Sustainable Removal of Heavy Metal Using Extracted Pandanus amaryllifolius Roxb.

Discharge of heavy metals from metal processing industries is known to have adverse effects to the environment. Conventional treatment technologies for removal of heavy metals from aqueous solution are not economical and generate huge quantity of toxic chemical sludge. Biosorption of heavy metals by metabolically inactive non-living biomass of microbial or plant origin is an innovative and alternative technology for removal of these pollutants from aqueous solution. Therefore, in this study, it is aimed to investigate the potential of pandan leaves as a biosorbent to remove heavy metal, copper. The pandan leaves were extracted via solvent extraction method. The effect of dosage of biosorbent, pH aqueous solution, and the biosorption contact time towards removal of copper (Cu2+) ions were studied. The concentration of copper ions was analyzed by using atomic adsorption spectroscopy (AAS). The maximum biosorption of Cu2+ ions was obtained up to 70 % for 5ppm of initial copper ions loading by 1 hour.