Kaolinite and Illite Based Clay Supporting Nickel: its Synthesis, Characterization, and Catalytic Optimazion in a Lab-Scale Fatty Acid Methyl Ester Production

The increasing world energy needs are not matched by the limited availability of fossil fuels thus the development of clean and sustainable fuels is the right solution. Biodiesel is one of these fuels and can be produced through transesterification reactions of vegetable oils in the presence of a catalyst. Acidic natural clay can be an option because of its large abundance, especially in the Indonesia and is heterogeneous in the solution it catalyzes. In this study, clay samples were obtained from an area in Bukittinggi City, West Sumatra Province, and then combined by wet impregnation with nickel as a catalyst in the transesterification reaction of used cooking oil to produce fatty acid methyl esters. Based on X-Ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, the presence of nickel ions does not affect the diffraction pattern of clay minerals contained in the soil consisting of kaolinite and illite. Measurements with X-Ray fluorescence (XRF) showed that the silicon-aluminum mole ratio also did not show a significant change where before mixing the value was 2.0 and after that it only decreased about 5 % to 1.9. The pore diameter of the catalyst was 3.03 nm known by Surface Area Analyzer (SAA). Several variations have been carried out to optimize the catalytic performance of the nickel supported clay and the best conditions were obtained when the catalyst concentration was 3 wt %, the methanol-oil mole ratio was 6:1, the reaction temperature was 70 °C and the reaction carried out for 3 hours. Under these conditions, the yield of methyl ester produced was 63 %