ETHYLENEDIAMINE MODIFIED CHITOSAN BEADS AS A CATALYST FOR BIODIESEL SYNTHESIS

• Main Author: Permata Cantika, Indah
• Format: Theses
• Language: Indonesia
• Subjects: Kimia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/75566
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

Biodiesel is one of the renewable alternative fuels which is easily made through a transesterification reaction, between vegetable oil or animal fat with short-chain alcohol and catalyst assistance. Palm oil is a reliable producer of vegetable oil as a raw material for making biodiesel and Indonesia is the number one producer and exporter of palm oil in the world. Heterogeneous catalyst have the advantage that they can be separated easily due to phase differences, are regenerative, and can be reused in biodiesel synthesis reactions. One of the potential raw materials is chitosan (CS), a natural polymer that is low cost and safe for the environment. The amine groups in CS play a catalytic role in transesterification. However, CS has limited and non-free amine groups, leading to suboptimal catalytic performance., so modifications were made to the CS structure using ethylenediamine (EDA) as donor of base group in the form of amines (N–H) with epichlorohydrin (ECH) as cross-linker. This study aims to synthesis and characterization catalysts in the form of CS, CS/ECH, and CS/ECH/EDA granules followed by testing the catalyst performance in biodiesel synthesis under various conditions. The success of biodiesel synthesis was analyzed using Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) to determine the desired target methyl ester compound and to determine the total area of the methyl ester formed in optimization using a Gas Chromatography Flame Ionization Detector (GC-FID). Based on the IR spectra of CS, CS/ECH, CS/ECH/EDA, there is an absorption band of O–H vibrations at 3415 and C–O bond vibrations at 2898 . The success of the CS/ECH/EDA modification was observed from the appearance of absorption wave numbers at 1655 which is the vibration of the primary N–H bond and 1566 which is the vibration of the secondary N–H bond. Where the bond that appears comes from the added EDA. In addition, CS/ECH/EDA has a spherical grain shape and is yellow compared to the CS and CS/ECH grain catalysts. Determination of the CS/ECH/EDA catalyst performance test showed that the optimum concentration of EDA addition was 5% (v/v), the reaction was at room temperature, the ratio of oil:MeOH was 1:1 (v/v), the total volume of oil/methanol was 10 mL, and catalyst mass of 0.75 gram. The biodiesel synthesized using the CS/ECH/EDA catalyst exhibited a catalytic performance that was 8 times better compared to the performance of the CS and CS/ECH beads catalysts with the methyl ester compounds formed including palmitic acid, methyl 9,10-octadecadienoic, oleic acid, methyl 12,13-tetradecadienoate, stearic acid, which was confirmed using GC-MS. In addition, the success of biodiesel synthesis can be seen from the IR characterization between palm oil and the synthesis of biodiesel, namely, there is an absorption band at 1193 which is the vibration of the O–CH3 bond (typical of biodiesel peak) and 1440 which is the vibration of the CH3 bond (typical biodiesel peak). The IR characterization of the synthesis biodiesel was also compared to commercial biodiesel where the IR analysis results of the synthesized biodiesel using CS/ECH/EDA granular catalysts had similar IR spectra with marketed commercial biodiesel. Furthermore, the CS/ECH/EDA catalyst was tested for its ability to be used repeatedly so that the results obtained in the 1st to 3rd use did not experience a decrease in the total area of the methyl ester indicating that the synthesized catalyst has fairly good stability. The decrease in the area of the methyl ester occurred in the 4th application by 29% compared to the 3rd application. After contact CS/ECH/EDA granular catalysts were characterized using IR with spectral results similar to the IR spectra of CS/ECH/EDA granular catalysts before contact indicating that the catalyst structure had not changed. In addition, SEM characterization was carried out on the catalyst before and after contact, there was no difference in the SEM image.