The potential use of calcium-doped flamboyant char as a heterogeneous catalyst in triglycerides transesterification

This study reports the synthesis of heterogeneous catalysts from flamboyant biomass and their evaluation on the transesterification reaction of safflower oil with methanol to produce biodiesel. The optimization of catalyst preparation conditions was performed. Results showed that the concentration of doping metallic specie was the main variable that affected the performance of flamboyant-based catalyst in the reactive system to obtain the biofuel where the highest formation of methyl esters was 93 %. Physicochemical characterization of the carbon-based catalysts was done with X-ray diffraction and FTIR.