Esterification of fatty acids from waste cooking oil to biodiesel over a sulfonated resin/PVA composite
Sulfonated cation exchange resins (s-CERs) have been widely studied as a replacement of liquid acids for the catalysis of esterification of free fatty acids (FFAs) to produce biodiesel with water as the only by-product. However, the water produced has strong affinity to sulfonate groups in s-CERs, w...
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| Format: | Article |
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Royal Society of Chemistry
2016
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/33644/ |
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| author | Zhang, Honglei Gao, Jiarui Zhao, Zengdian Chen, George Zheng Wu, Tao He, Feng |
| author_facet | Zhang, Honglei Gao, Jiarui Zhao, Zengdian Chen, George Zheng Wu, Tao He, Feng |
| author_sort | Zhang, Honglei |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | Sulfonated cation exchange resins (s-CERs) have been widely studied as a replacement of liquid acids for the catalysis of esterification of free fatty acids (FFAs) to produce biodiesel with water as the only by-product. However, the water produced has strong affinity to sulfonate groups in s-CERs, which block the reactive sites for esterification and thus reduce the activity of a catalyst. To overcome this technical barrier, we have designed an s-CER/PVA composite by incorporating s-CER fines within a poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) matrix. PVA has a much stronger absorption preference for water than s-CERs and has very low selectivity for reactants (FFAs and methanol), which enables continuous removal of the produced water and liberation of reactive sulfonate sites in s-CERs for catalysis. With s-CER/PVA, FFA conversion was increased from 80.1% to 97.5% after an 8-hour reaction and the turnover frequency (TOF) was increased more than 3.3 times. The TOF of s-CER/PVA was also 2.6 times higher than that of sulfuric acid, suggesting that water-less, heterogeneous sulfonate sites are more reactive than water-blocked homogeneous ones. The reusability of s-CER/PVA was also enhanced due to the fact that the produced water that could cause deactivation of the s-CERs was largely removed by PVA. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:19:55Z |
| format | Article |
| id | nottingham-33644 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:19:55Z |
| publishDate | 2016 |
| publisher | Royal Society of Chemistry |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-336442020-05-04T17:47:51Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/33644/ Esterification of fatty acids from waste cooking oil to biodiesel over a sulfonated resin/PVA composite Zhang, Honglei Gao, Jiarui Zhao, Zengdian Chen, George Zheng Wu, Tao He, Feng Sulfonated cation exchange resins (s-CERs) have been widely studied as a replacement of liquid acids for the catalysis of esterification of free fatty acids (FFAs) to produce biodiesel with water as the only by-product. However, the water produced has strong affinity to sulfonate groups in s-CERs, which block the reactive sites for esterification and thus reduce the activity of a catalyst. To overcome this technical barrier, we have designed an s-CER/PVA composite by incorporating s-CER fines within a poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) matrix. PVA has a much stronger absorption preference for water than s-CERs and has very low selectivity for reactants (FFAs and methanol), which enables continuous removal of the produced water and liberation of reactive sulfonate sites in s-CERs for catalysis. With s-CER/PVA, FFA conversion was increased from 80.1% to 97.5% after an 8-hour reaction and the turnover frequency (TOF) was increased more than 3.3 times. The TOF of s-CER/PVA was also 2.6 times higher than that of sulfuric acid, suggesting that water-less, heterogeneous sulfonate sites are more reactive than water-blocked homogeneous ones. The reusability of s-CER/PVA was also enhanced due to the fact that the produced water that could cause deactivation of the s-CERs was largely removed by PVA. Royal Society of Chemistry 2016-04-05 Article PeerReviewed Zhang, Honglei, Gao, Jiarui, Zhao, Zengdian, Chen, George Zheng, Wu, Tao and He, Feng (2016) Esterification of fatty acids from waste cooking oil to biodiesel over a sulfonated resin/PVA composite. Catalysis Science and Technology, 2016 (6). pp. 5590-5598. ISSN 2044-4761 http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2016/CY/C5CY02133B#!divAbstract doi:10.1039/C5CY02133B doi:10.1039/C5CY02133B |
| spellingShingle | Zhang, Honglei Gao, Jiarui Zhao, Zengdian Chen, George Zheng Wu, Tao He, Feng Esterification of fatty acids from waste cooking oil to biodiesel over a sulfonated resin/PVA composite |
| title | Esterification of fatty acids from waste cooking oil to biodiesel over a sulfonated resin/PVA composite |
| title_full | Esterification of fatty acids from waste cooking oil to biodiesel over a sulfonated resin/PVA composite |
| title_fullStr | Esterification of fatty acids from waste cooking oil to biodiesel over a sulfonated resin/PVA composite |
| title_full_unstemmed | Esterification of fatty acids from waste cooking oil to biodiesel over a sulfonated resin/PVA composite |
| title_short | Esterification of fatty acids from waste cooking oil to biodiesel over a sulfonated resin/PVA composite |
| title_sort | esterification of fatty acids from waste cooking oil to biodiesel over a sulfonated resin/pva composite |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/33644/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/33644/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/33644/ |