Synthesis of sulfonated carbon catalyst from waste orange peel for cost effective biodiesel production

The present research work deals with the bio-waste valorisation approach for the catalyst development and then its use in the low cost biodiesel production. The sulfonated carbon catalyst, a solid acid is prepared from waste orange peels (WOP) through carbonization followed by sulfonation treatment. WOP is one of the bio-wastes of food industries. The developed catalyst was characterized using elemental, spectral and thermal analysis. Surface area and pore volume is measured using Brunauer, Emmett and Teller (BET) surface area analysis. The synthesized catalyst exhibits 44 m2/g surface area and 1.57 mmol/g acid density. To demonstrate the catalytic performance, the sulfonated carbon catalyst was used to esterify corn acid oil (CAO), a low cost feed stock containing 127.21 mg KOH/g acid value, to generate cost effective biodiesel. 91.68% biodiesel conversion is obtained under optimized conditions using Box-Behnken Design (BBD).