Abstract:
Biodiesel is gaining much attention as an alternative for the increasing demand for
fossil fuels. To increase the rate of reaction, homogenous catalysts are still used
commercially to make biodiesel, which causes separation and waste neutralization
issues and needs the use of costly refined oil as a feedstock. Modern heterogeneous
catalysts have many remarkable and tunable features such as non-corrosive, easy to
separate, recyclable, high porosity, and large surface. Rice husk based biochar is a
carbonaceous material made from the thermochemical conversion of biomass. It can
be chemically modified with treating acid solutions or alkali solutions. Acid treated
Rice husk based biochar has more surface area and pore volume, compared to alkali
treated Rice husk based biochar. Nanotechnological s5,nthetic protocols can aid in the
design and modification of catalyst surfaces to produce biodiesel and to respond to the
activity of heterogeneous catalysts. The alkali treated biochar can use more times than
the acid treated biochar. However, both catalysts derived from rice husk have good
catalytic performance in biodiesel production.
