Synthesis of novel ternary NiO–CdO-Nd2O3 nanocomposite for biodiesel production

Novel tri-phase NiO–CdO-Nd2O3 nanocomposite was prepared by coprecipitation method and its catalytic activity in transesterification reaction was studied. The synthesized nanocomposite was characterized by using FTIR, XRD, SEM and EDX to explore the functional, structural morphological and compositional properties respectively. In FTIR studies the vibrational bands for NiO, CdO and Nd2O3 have been observed. The XRD pattern of nanocomposite revealed its crystalline nature and average particle size was calculated as 28nm. The SEM studies of nanocomposite revealed that the shape of nanocomposite is semi-circle and oval shaped. EDX analysis represented elemental composition of ternary composite. The newly prepared catalyst was used as heterogeneous catalyst in transesterification of triglycerides from mustard oil into fatty acid methyl esters as biodiesel fuel. The oval shaped nanoparticles showed good catalytic activity in biodiesel synthesis. The obtained biodiesel was thoroughly characterized using FTIR and 1H NMR spectroscopic techniques. FT-IR analysis was also used to find out percentage yield using absorption spectra of different oil & methanol molar ratio. The FAMEs composition of obtained biodiesel was determined by GC-MS analysis which showed presence of methyl palmitoleate (C16:1), methyl linoleate (C18:2), methyl oleate (C18:1), metyl erucate (C22:1) and methyl behenate (C22:0) at various retention time. The quality of fuel parameters such as density, viscosity, cloud, pour and flash points were determined using ASTM methods and found within limits. The effect of several parameters on yield of biodiesel such as oil to methanol ratio (1:6, 1:9, 1:12, 1:15 and 1:18) catalyst amount (0.1, 0.5 and 0.9g) time of reaction (1.5, 2.5, 5.0 and 7.5h) and effect of temperature (60–80 °C with interval of 5 °C) were studied in detail and optimized. The 80% yield of biodiesel was achieved at optimum conditions of 1:15 oil:methanol ratio, 0.5 g catalyst concentration, 5 h reaction time and 80 °C temperature. The reusability of catalyst was tested by using three times and the results were good with minor loss of catalytic activity.