Babak Aghel

This paper focuses on creating a new, environmentally sustainable catalyst made of industrial phosphoric waste and clinoptilolite for transesterification of waste cooking oil. A state-of-the-art CaO-based catalyst supported on the industrial phosphoric waste was obtained from a clinoptilolite zeolite-like material and alkali-activated CaO. So after ordinary purification, the clinoptilolite, and the weighed calcium oxide were stirred for 24 h at room temperature and then kept at 800 °C for 2 h for the formation of the catalyst. For assessment of the catalyst, the study used XRF, FT-IR, SEM, XRD, and BET. Under optimized conditions, the highest purity of biodiesel for waste cooking oil was 84.76%, the oil to methanol volume ratio was 1.47, the catalyst dosage was 8.08 wt%, the temperature was 54.72 °C, and the duration was 119 min. Results indicated that using waste cooking oil as raw materials and clinoptilolite/CaO as a catalyst for biodiesel development is a cost-effective and eco-friendly oil-recycling method and minimizes the production costs of biodiesel to improve biodiesel's competitiveness vis petroleum diesel.