Valorization of Waste Cooking Oil into Biodiesel over Heteropolyacids Immobilized on Mesoporous Silica — A Kinetic Study

Biodiesel production from WCO with methanol was carried out over tungstophosphoric acid immobilized on SBA-15 by grafting technique, at 60°C. After PW immobilization, the morphology of the support remained. In order to optimize the conditions, the influence of various reaction parameters, the nature of alcohol and the amount of initial free fatty acid on the transesterification of WCO in the presence of PW-NH2-SBA-15 catalyst were carried out. The esterification/transesterification of WCO with propanol and ethanol led to lower concentration of fatty acid esters than with methanol. When different amounts of free fatty acids (palmitic acid) were added to the WCO, a slight increase on the concentration of FAME was observed. In order to study the catalytic stability of PW-NH2-SBA-15 catalyst, four consecutive batch runs were carried out

Dealing with plastic waste from agriculture activity

The increase in agricultural production and food quality has forced the growing useof plastics in various activities. The plastic wastes are partially recycled in or outside Portugal;nevertheless, the contaminated wastes are sent to landfill. It is crucial to consider new models fortheir valorization at a regional level and from a circular economy perspective. In the scope of the Placarv õ es project, a study was elaborated, which included the types and quantities of plastics used in the irrigation area of the Alqueva Dam, in southern Portugal. The crops that use the most plastic are intensive olive groves, almonds, and table grapes, which represent more than 91% of total plastic waste. The production of activated carbons (ACs) is a solution to avoid plastics landfill. ACs wereproduced from plastic used on food packaging (PB-Samples) and sheeting film (PS-Samples) byactivation with K 2 CO 3 . ACs presented well-developed textural properties (PB-K 2 CO 3 -1:1–700 andPS-K 2 CO 3 -1:1–700 exhibited a volume of 0.32 and 0.25 cm 3 g − 1 and an apparent surface area of 723 and 623 m 2 g − 1 , respectively). Both ACs performed very well concerning four pesticide removals from the liquid phase. This solution is very promising, such these ACs could be applied in effluent treatments on a large scale

Valorisation of glycerol with cinnamaldehyde over phosphotungstic acid encapsulated on NaY zeolite

Glycerol was reacted with cinnamaldehyde over phosphotungstic acid (PW) encapsulated on NaY at 100°C. Catalysts containing different PW contents were prepared. The activity increased with an increasing amount of PW encapsulated on NaY, and the use of the NaY-PW4 (0.121 gpw/gNaY) material resulted in a superior conversion compared to those obtained using the other materials. After 5 h, the conversion of glycerol was 89% at 100°C using 0.3 g of catalyst and a glycerol:cinnamaldehyde molar ratio of 1:2.25. Furthermore, NaY-PW4 exhibited a good catalytic stability