The demand for fossil fuel increases, causing it to deplete day by day, the need to find

renewable energy sources becomes more important all over the world. Biodiesel seems the
promising way of producing energy. The non-availability of the raw materials is the main
hurdle for the commercialization of biodiesel and restraining it from gaining so much
popularity like traditional petroleum. Thus usage of waste cooking oil can be the alternative
way to overcome this problem.

Furthermore, the waste 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 produces a high yield, but the separation and purification of the product take a
long 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 being utilized for the production of biodiesel
(Carlucci, Degennaro, & Luisi, 2019). Moreover, because of the smaller particle size and
higher surface area, nanomaterials were reported to be more active in the transesterification
reaction as it provide a higher surface area for the reaction to occur. Therefore research on the
application of Cu impregnated TiO2 as a heterogeneous nanocatalyst for the production of
biodiesel from cooking oil has to be developed to address this issue.