Over the years, production of biodiesel has gain momentum due to the advent of novel catalysts like bifunctional heterogeneous catalyst which is capable of catalyzing both esterification and transesterification reaction simultaneously through its multiple sites, and this save time, cost of production, materials utilization and most importantly production of biodiesel from oleochemicals with high free fatty acid. Thus, this study focused on the assessment of the efficiency of bifunctional heterogeneous catalyst (CaO/Al2O3) on biodiesel production using oleochemicals (Bush Mango Seed Oil (BMSO), African Native Pear Seed Oil (ANPSO) and Orange Peels Oil (OPO) as triglycerides. The bifunctional heterogeneous catalysts which were produced at various conditions of temperature, time and components mixing ratio (CaO: Al2O3) were used to catalyze the transesterification reaction in order to ascertain their efficacies. Among the tested catalyst, catalyst B yielded the highest percentage of biodiesel with 67.3%, 35.5 % and 60.2 % for ANPSO, BMSO and OPO respectively. Analysis of physicochemical properties of the biodiesel (flash point, cloud point, pour point, viscosity and density) showed that there are all within the range of acceptable values for biodiesel specified by ASTM6751.
Akpan et al. (Mon,) studied this question.