Preparation of Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes Supported Zinc Oxide Catalyst for Transesterification of Kesambi (Schleichera oleosa) Oil

In this work, multi-walled carbon nanotubes supported zinc oxide (ZnO/MWCNTs) as a heterogeneous catalyst for transesterification had been successfully prepared via the modified Stober-like synthesis method. The effect of calcination temperature during the catalyst preparation towards reaction was investigated. These catalyst was also characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, N2 adsorption-desorption analysis followed by Brunauer- Emmett-Teller (BET) calculation to determine the total surface area, and scanning electrone microscopy with energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDX). Transesterification of kesambi (Schleichera oleosa) oil also had been done to test the activity of the prepared catalysts. However, the quantity of dispersed zinc oxide (ZnO) on multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) are quite small that is lower than 5 %wt. It produces low conversion of transesterification after 3 hours reaction that is under 15% of conversion.