Investigation of cement kiln dust utilization for catalyzing biodiesel production via response surface methodology

According to the current consumption of world fossil-based oil, coal and natural gas used to produce energy, worldwide reserves of these fuels will be depleted in less than 10 decades. Therefore, new renewable energy sources have to be developed to overcome this problem. Biodiesel is one of these new sources; it is composed of methyl or ethyl esters produced from vegetable oil or animal fats and possesses fuel properties similar to diesel fuel. This paper presents a study of factors affecting biodiesel production using cement kiln dust (CKD), as heterogeneous catalyst, and determination of the optimum reaction conditions. This was achieved by using the factorial design and response surface methodology in conjunction with steepest ascent method in the range of this study. The optimum conditions were found to be: A reaction time of about 6h, catalyst loading of 2% of oil mass and methanol to oil molar ratio of 15:1. Fixed mixing speed of 800rpm and constant temperature of 65 degrees C were used in all experiments. After performing the optimization process, CKD leachability was studied in order to determine its stability and reusability. Copyright (c) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.