transesterification of soybean oil to biodiesel using sro nanoparticles as a solid base catalyst

sro nano oxides was prepared by sol-gel method and used as a basic heterogeneous catalyst for transesterification of soybean oil with methanol to methyl esters (biodiesel). the catalyst was characterized using x-ray diffraction (xrd), scanning electron microscopy (sem and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ftir) techniques. it was found that using 1% (based on the soybean oil weight) of the catalyst, methanol to oil molar ratio of 15 produced biodiesel in excess of %99 at 60^oc within 15 min.