Resumen
Methyl ester (biodiesel), one of the renewable sources of energy that has been highlighted as an excellent alternative fuel due to its versatile properties. Despite being a remarkable fuel, several issues such as industrial production cost, environmental issues related to the usage of homogenous catalyst and also its long-term profitability, are among the problems that need to be solved with in the biodiesel production sphere. Hence, one approach to overcome the problems are to switch to the use of Palm Fatty Acid Distillate (PFAD) as a low cost starting material and the heterogeneous Sago Pith Waste catalyst. The catalyst produced was characterized using X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), Brunauer Emmet and Teller (BET), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Temperature-Programmed Desorption - Ammonia (TPD-NH3) and Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) while percentage biodiesel yield and PFAD conversion were analysed by gas chromatography - flame ionization detector (GC-FID) and acid-base titration, respectively. It has been demonstrated that the percentage yield of biodiesel from the PFAD by employing sulphonated sago pith waste reached 99.34 % under the following catalyst synthesis conditions of ratio mass of dry SPW: volume of sulphuric acid of 1:20, sulphonation time of 5 minutes and partial carbonisation temperature of 200 oC.