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Synthesis and Initial Evaluation of Solid Acid Catalyst Derived from Spent Coffee Grounds for the Esterification of Oleic Acid and Methanol

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Abstract

Spent coffee grounds (SCGs) were utilized in the synthesis of a solid acid catalyst (SAC) through a carbonization–sulfonation process performed at low temperatures (350–500 °C for carbonization and 50–150 °C for sulfonation) and short processing times (1–10 h). The best SAC from the process was able to convert more than 90% of oleic acid to methyl oleate during esterification with methanol (10 mol OA/mol methanol, 80 °C, 7 h, 10%w/w catalyst loading). It was obtained by carbonizing SCG at 400 °C for 2 h and then sulfonating the biochar at 100 °C for 1 h. The reusability tests performed in 4 cycles at the same esterification conditions reveal loss of activity of about 70% of its original state, corresponding to a decrease in total acid and sulfonic acid densities from 4.22 and 3.36 mmol H+/g to 1.33 and 1.16 mmol H+/g, respectively. This process is a considerable improvement from that reported in previous works, having no activating agents in the carbonization process and with significantly shorter times for processing.

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Funding

This work was financially supported by the Taiwan Building Technology Center (Grant/Project Number—108P011) from the Featured Areas Research Center Program within the framework of the Higher Education Sprout Project by the Ministry of Education in Taiwan, as well as the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology for the teaching and research start-up grant (Grant/Project Number—109O210007/109O410307) provided for 2019–2021 to organize the research group involved and partially supported the acquisition of the materials used in this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Keelung Road, Da’an District, Taipei City, 10607, Taiwan

    Ramelito C. Agapay, Hsin-Chen Liu, Yi-Hsu Ju & Kristelle L. Quijote

  2. Graduate Institute of Applied Science and Technology, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Keelung Road, Da’an District, Taipei City, 10607, Taiwan

    Yi-Hsu Ju, Alchris Woo Go & Artik Elisa Angkawijaya

  3. Taiwan Building Technology Center, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Keelung Road, Da’an District, Taipei City, 10607, Taiwan

    Yi-Hsu Ju

  4. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Can Tho University, 3-2 Street, Can Tho City, Viet Nam

    Phuong Lan Tran Nguyen

  5. Department of Chemical Engineering, Can Tho University, 3-2 Street, Can Tho City, Viet Nam

    Chi Thanh Truong

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  1. Ramelito C. Agapay
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  2. Hsin-Chen Liu
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Contributions

Formal analysis, visualization, writing–original draft, writing–review and editing [RCA]; methodology, investigation, formal analysis, data curation [H-CL]; supervision, project administration, funding acquisition, writing–review and editing [Y-HJ]; conceptualization, formal analysis, writing—review and editing, project administration and funding acquisition [AWG]; writing–review and editing [AEA]; writing–review and editing [PLT-N]; writing–review and editing [CTT]; writing–review and editing [KLQ].

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Correspondence to Alchris Woo Go.

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Agapay, R.C., Liu, HC., Ju, YH. et al. Synthesis and Initial Evaluation of Solid Acid Catalyst Derived from Spent Coffee Grounds for the Esterification of Oleic Acid and Methanol. Waste Biomass Valor 12, 4387–4397 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12649-020-01325-6

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