Kanemite from rice husk ash as an efficient, cheap and recoverable base catalyst for production of biodiesel

In this work, Kanemite was prepared from rice husk ash and used as a heterogeneous base catalyst for production of biodiesel from sunflower oil. The catalyst was characterized by PXRD, FESEM and FT-IR. The transesterification conditions, such as the catalyst dosage, molar ratio of methanol to oil, reaction temperature and reaction time were investigated and optimized. The results revealed that by a catalyst loading of 5 wt. %, methanol to oil ratio of 24:1, reaction temperature of 65 °C and reaction time of 4h, conversion of biodiesel reached 97.2%. Moreover, the catalyst could be reused up to five cycles under the optimum reaction conditions without significant loss of product yield.