INTRODUCTION

The global energy crisis which concerning the world’s demands on the limited natural
resources emanated as a result of rapid growth in human population at a quarter of a million
per day, scientific and technological advancement . These limited natural resources that are
used to power industrial society kept diminishing as the demand rises resulting the depletion
of conventional fossil fuel thus prompting the search for alternative renewable energy
sources. These natural resources are in limited supply as they do occur naturally but it can
take hundreds of thousands of years to replenish the stores. Apart from coal, nuclear power,
natural gas and hydroelectricity that serve at different capacity in the provision of energy,
60% of the total crude oil consumption in the world goes towards transportation which is an
integral part of the global company that only rely on petroleum based source of energy
(Avhad & Marchetti, 2015).

Thus, the need for alternative fuel which is more sustainable and environment friendly over
the conventional fossil fuel is crucial. Biodiesel is one of the most promising alternative
sources of energy as it possesses nontoxic and biodegradable properties with less emission of
greenhouse gases like NOx, SOx, CO, CO2, (Alsharifi, Znad, Hena, & Ang, 2017). Biodiesel
is a composition of mono alkyl esters derived from oils through a transesterification reaction
which involved the reaction of oil or fat to form alkyl esters and glycerol. The non-
availability of the raw materials is the main hurdle for the commercialization of biodiesel
and restraining it to gain so much popularity like the traditional petroleum. (Ma & Hanna,
1999).

Traditionally, transesterification can be performed homogeneously by acid and base catalysts

such as NaOH or KOH. This method of production produce a high yield but the separation
and purification of the product take a longer time and time consuming. Apart from that, the
method is also costly. Thus, in overcoming these problems, the research has been focused on
the heterogeneous based catalyst in recent years. The heterogeneous catalysts are insoluble
and recyclable and provides a more cost-effective pathway to biodiesel production . The use
of heterogeneous catalysts for biodiesel synthesis is considered an eco-friendly process as it
reduce the synthesis cost of biodiesel and environmental pollution. (Tan, Abdullah, Nolasco-
Hipolito, & Taufiq-Yap, 2015)
Till date, different heterogeneous catalysts have been developed in the transesterification
process, such as silica , Al2O3 supported Cao & MgO , NKC-9 cation-exchange resin
,calcium manganese oxide , Co-Zn/ HZSM-5 and KF/ZnO (Umdu, Tuncer, & Seker, 2009) .
Some other solid catalysts such as egg shell , calcium containing silicate mixed oxide and
snail shell were also been used as the heterogeneous catalyst (Tan et al., 2015).
Nanomaterials, which exhibit extraordinary properties such as insolubility, recyclability,
stability, were also been utilized for the production of biodiesel. Moreover, because of lower
particle size and higher surface area, nanomaterials were reported to be more active in
transesterification reaction. Some nanocatalyst such as lithium ion impregnated calcium
oxide and bimetallic gold-silver core-shell nanoparticles were applied as the heterogeneous
catalyst. (Hu, Guan, Wang, & Han, 2011). Apart from these catalysts TiO2 is reported to
have some additional properties compared to other conventional nanomaterials such as
durability, antifungal, environ-mental friendly, and cheap (Sébastien, 2012). Recently Li
impregnated TiO2 was used as a heterogeneous catalyst for the pro- duction of biodiesel and
it was reported the product yield of 98% (Alsharifi et al., 2017). However, a very few works
have been done on metal impregnated TiO 2 as a heterogeneous catalyst for the production of
biodiesel.

Selection of feed stock is very important and crucial in order to improve the feasibility of
economic of the biodiesel product. Used cooking oil is used as the feedstock and considered
as promising alternative in biodiesel synthesis, due to their low cost and high availability The
used cooking oil can come from palm, sunflower, corn, canola, or any other oil that was
originally used for the food preparation. The use of used cooking oil would reduce the costs
of removal and treatment of the residue.

This experimental work involves the use of TiO2 as heterogeneous catalyst along with
impregnation of copper for the production of biodiesel. The used cooking oil IS chosen as the
feedstock. Experiments will be conducted under various reaction conditions, such as catalyst
dose, time, temperature, methanol to oil ratio in order to optimize the biodiesel yield.
OBJECTIVES
The proposed research is defined with the following objectives :

-To study the production of biodiesel from used cooking oil

-To investigate the performance of heterogenous nanocatalyst through transesterification

- To analyse the properties of biodiesel

Problem statement

The demand of fossil fuel increases causing it to deplete day by day, the need to find a
renewable energy sources becomes more important all over the world. Biodiesel seems the
promising way in producing energy. The non-availability of the raw materials is the main
hurdle for the commercialization of biodiesel and restraining it to gain so much popularity
like the traditional petroleum. Thus usage of used cooking oil can be the alternative way to
overcome this problem. Furthermore the used cooking oil can be recycled as the quantity of
waste cooking oil generated per year by any country is huge. The disposal of waste cooking
oil is problematic that may contaminate the environment. Conventionally, transesterification
can be performed homogeneously by acid and base catalysts such as NaOH or KOH. This
method of production produce a high yield but the separation and purification of the product
take a longer time and time consuming. Apart from that, the method is also costly. Thus, in
overcoming these problems, the research has been focused on the heterogeneous based
catalyst in recent years. Nanomaterials, which exhibit extraordinary properties such as
insolubility, recyclability, stability, were also been utilized for the production of biodiesel.
Moreover, because of lower particle size and higher surface area, nanomaterials were
reported to be more active in transesterification reaction. Therefore a research on application
of Cu impregnated TiO2 as a heterogenous nanocatalyst for the production of biodiesel from
cooking oil has to be developed to address this issue.