Application of KF/MgO as a heterogeneous catalyst in the production of biodiesel from rapeseed oil

Biodiesel was synthesized from rapeseed oil by transesterification over Magnesium oxide loaded with KF. The catalytic activity strongly depends on the loading amount of KF and calcined temperature. We found that the reaction reached a 79.37% yield when the loading amount was at 35 wt% and calcined at 500 °C. The simply dried 30% KF/MgO at 80 °C was found to give equally good results from the catalyst calcined at 500 °C, avoiding the usual activation at high temperature. The catalysts were characterized by the Hammett indicator method, BET, TG/DTG, XRD, NMR, EDS, and FT-IR. According to the instrumental analysis, the activity in the transesterification probably belonged to coordinately unsaturated F− and liberation of hydroxide during preparation. The effects of methanol/oil ratio and catalyst amounts on the conversion were also studied in this paper.