The thermal stability of potassium metal catalysts at different carbonization temperature / Muhammad Izzulwafiq Mohd Fadzli

As the semester begins, all of the semester five students are required to take a final year project course as requirement for the chemical engineering diploma. the title for my research is the thermal stability of potassium metal catalysts at different carbonization temperature. This experiment is about the process of the making the activate carbon using oil palm kernel shell with the impregnation of the potassium metal. This is the first step to produce fatty acid methyl ester, or the other name is biodiesel. For this experiment problem statement, heterogeneous acid and enzyme catalyze system suffers from serious mass transfer limitation problems and therefore are not favourable for industrial application. The other problem is that the existing catalysts for the biodiesel production consists of strong metal alkaline such as natrium hydroxide and potassium hydroxide are too expensive. To overcome this situation, the objective of this research is to determine the effect of the temperature on mass loss of carbonized oil palm kernel shell and to determine the effect of the temperature on mass loss of k metal catalysts. For the methodology, the first step that is required to conduct the research is to prepare the raw material. After that, carbonize process take place as soon as the preparation stage complete. Next is the impregnation process and the last step is calcination process. The result for this experiment is that the activated carbon at 900 ℃ carbonization temperature are the best value that lead to the highest % of FAME yield.