Data on calcium oxide and cow bone catalysts used for soybean biodiesel production

Biodiesel was produced from soybean oil using calcium oxide and cow bone as heterogeneous catalysts, through transesterification process. The soybean oil used was characterized using gas chromatography mass spectrometer (GCMS) and the cow bone catalyst produced was characterized X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometer. The effects of the variation of methanol/oil mole ratio, catalyst concentration and reaction temperature on biodiesel yield during the transesterification of soybean oil were investigated. Reaction time of 3 h and stirring rate of 500 rpm were kept constant. Using Response Optimizer (Minitab 17), the optimum conditions for biodiesel production were established. It was observed that the calcination of cow bone catalyst enhanced its conversion to apatite-CaOH. Also, the results obtained showed that the performance trends of calcined cow bone catalyst and the conventional CaO catalyst were similar.