Synthesis, characterization and catalytic evaluation of magnetically recoverable SrO/CoFe2O4 nanocatalyst for biodiesel production from babassu oil transesterification

Abstract

Biodiesel production has gained a lot of attention due to its environmental benefits and production from renewable sources. Here, it is reported a magnetically recoverable catalyst of SrO immobilized on a CoFe2O4 support (SrO/CoFe2O4), which was efficiently applied for babassu oil transesterification and used up to four cycles without a significant activity loss. The stability and performance of the catalyst were analyzed considering the solvent used for its synthesis. Characterizations such as vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM), thermogravimetry (TG), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) were performed. The present study demonstrated that the catalyst has a strong magnetic response, which reflects the nature of the nanoparticles. For the first run, the material presented a yield of 96% when synthesized in acetone in a molar proportion of SrO/CoFe2O4 of 5:1.