Biodiesel Production from Waste Cooking Oil over Mesoporous SO₄^2-/Zr-SBA-15

Biodiesel production from waste cooking oils over SO₄^2-/Zr-SBA-15 catalyst was successfully carried out and investigated. SO₄^2-/Zr-SBA-15 catalyst was prepared by one-step process using anhydrous zirconium nitrate as zirconium resource, and endowed with the strong Lewis acid sites formed by supporting the zirconium species onto the SBA-15 surface. The asprepared SO₄^2-/Zr-SBA-15 showed excellent triglyceride conversion efficiency of 92.3% and fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) yield of 91.7% for the transesteriffication of waste cooking oil with methanol under the optimized reaction conditions: the methanol/oil molar ratio of 30, the reaction temperature of 160 oC, the reaction time of 12 h and 10wt% of catalyst. It was noticed that the as-prepared SO₄^2-/Zr-SBA-15 materials with the higher area surface of mesoporous framework and the surface acidity displayed excellent stability and reusability, maintaining high FAME yield of (74±1)% after seven runs of reaction.