used or co-used for biodiesel production. The study of varying
waste shells, such as mollusk shells and eggshell, was reported
by Viriya-empikul et al. (2010) [14]. The works revealed that the
waste shell-derived catalysts were active for catalyzing transesterification.
Further study on the characteristics of the catalysts and
the catalytic activity together with the optimization of the catalyst
preparation and the reaction conditions would be essentially useful
for realizing this approach.
In this research, the catalytic activity of meretrix venus shell
was investigated by various parameters, for example, molar ratio
of methanol/oil, calcination time and calcination temperature of
catalysts. Furthermore, the catalyst sources, such as, two types of
waste mollusk shells, golden apple snail shell and meretrix venus
shell, and waste eggshell, were compared by biodiesel production
activity. The waste shell-derived catalysts were characterized by
thermo-gravimetric/differential thermal analyzer (TG/DTA), X-ray
diffraction (XRD), energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF)
spectroscopy, scanning electron microscope (SEM), nitrogen sorption
and CO2 temperature-programmed desorption, and were
tested in transesterification to produce biodiesel from palm olein
oil. The characteristics of the catalysts derived from those wastes
and their catalytic activity were investigated.