Biodiesel synthesis by TiO2–ZnO mixed oxide nanocatalyst catalyzed palm oil transesterification process

Biodiesel is a promising alternating environmentally benign fuel to mineral diesel. For the development of easier transesterification process, stable and active heterogeneous mixed metal oxide of TiO2–ZnO and ZnO nanocatalysts were synthesized and exploited for the palm oil transesterification process. The synthesized catalysts were characterized by XRD, FT-IR, and FE-SEM studies for their structural and morphological characteristics. It was found that TiO2–ZnO nanocatalyst exhibits good catalytic activity and the catalytic performance was greatly depends on (i) catalyst concentration (ii) methanol to oil molar ratio (iii) reaction temperature and (iv) reaction time. A highest 98% of conversion was obtained at the optimum reaction parameters with 200 mg of catalyst loading and the biodiesel was analyzed by TLC and 1H NMR techniques. The TiO2–ZnO nanocatalyst shows good catalytic performance over the ZnO catalyst, which could be a potential candidate for the large-scale biodiesel production from palm oil at the reduced temperature and time.