Reusable Na-SiO₂@CeO₂catalyst for efficient biodiesel production from non-edible wild olive oil as a new and potential feedstock

The main purpose of the current research work is to design competent heterogeneous catalyst for the development of sustainable biodiesel technology. Therefore, a novel and an efficient Na-SiO₂@CeO₂ heterogeneous catalyst was designed for sustainable and eco-friendly biodiesel production using wild olive oil as a new and potentially non-edible feedstock. The designed catalyst was further characterized by using FT-IR, BET-BJH, SEM, EDX, XPS and XRD spectroscopic techniques. The experimental results demonstrated that the synthesized catalyst appeared to be efficient for the conversion of wild olive oil to biodiesel, providing maximum yield of 97% at optimum reaction conditions: catalyst concentration 2.5w/w%, reaction duration 120 min, reaction temperature 65 °C, and oil/methanol molar ratio 1:10. It was observed from the endurance test that the synthesized catalyst has remarkable catalytic potency upto five consecutive runs, showing profound stability with negligible leaching of the active basic sites from the surface of the catalyst.