Waste Egg shell as heterogeneous nanocatalyst for biodiesel production: Optimization and Engine Characteristics study.

The objective of our present work is preparation of low cost heterogeneous calcium oxide catalyst from egg shell for the waste cooking oil biodiesel production and optimization. The egg shell catalyst was prepared by calcination at the temperature range of 300-900 and characterized using scanning electron Microscopy (SEM), Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDAX) and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR). The transesterification process was catalyzed by calcinated egg shell catalyst and the biodiesel yield% was optimized by varying parameters such as reaction temperature and time, catalyst weight and methanol to oil molar ratio. The L9 orthogonal array was selected for the Taguchi optimization. Among the selected parameter's temperature and methanol to oil ratio were found to be maximum influencing parameters. The maximum biodiesel yield% was 94.3% and this was obtained at temperature of 60 ºC, 6wt% catalyst weight%, and 4 hrs. time and 12:1 methanol to oil ratio levels. The egg shell catalyst calcinated at 900ºC has shown good regeneration capacity. The biodiesel %yield was 76% even after the five transesterification cycles. This is an additional advantage of the egg shell heterogeneous catalyst for the commercialization of the catalyst. The obtained biodiesel was blended with diesel at various proportional namely B50, B40, B30, B20. The engine characteristics such as Performance emission and Combustion were studied for the prepared blends and compared with Diesel, B100 for better understanding.