Esterification of Waste Chicken Fat: Sulfonated MWCNT Toward Biodiesel Production

We used esterification/transesterification of sunflower oil (SFO) and waste chicken fat (WCF) for biodiesel (BD) production. Sulfonated multiwall carbon nanotube was used as heterogeneous acidic catalyst toward esterification of WCF before trans-esterification with potassium hydroxide. The amount of free fatty acid (FFA) for WCF could be reduced to < 1 % using one-step esterification with methanol/FFA molar ratio of 30:1, solid catalyst amount of 25 % (with regarding to the weight of FFA), temperature of reactor 90 degrees C and reaction time of 3 h, which provide the situation for subsequently conventional transesterification via alkaline catalyst. The optimum reaction parameters of esterification and transesterification of WCF were used to BD production. Finally, transesterification of WCF has been compared with SFO to compare their biodiesel production efficiency.