Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Industrial Crops & Products journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/indcrop Research Paper Musa balbisiana Colla peel as highly effective renewable heterogeneous base catalyst for biodiesel production Minakshi Gohain ⁎ , Anuchaya Devi, Dhanapati Deka Biomass Conversion Laboratory, Department of Energy, Tezpur University, Napaam, 784028, Assam, India ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Musa balbisiana Colla peels Catalyst Transesterification Biodiesel 100% conversion ABSTRACT Biodiesel production process encourages use of heterogeneous catalyst over homogeneous catalysts. The major problems associated with the use of homogeneous catalysts are its non-renewable nature, separation and washing which can be overcome by the use of heterogeneous catalysts. Therefore, in this work use of Musa balbisiana Colla peels, a waste biomass material has been used for preparing eco-friendly and highly effective heterogeneous base catalyst for sustainable biodiesel production. The peels of Musa balbisiana Colla have been characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), powder X-ray diffractograms (XRD), Energy Dispersive Analysis of X-ray (EDAX), Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analysis. The conversion of the waste cooking oil into biodiesel was confirmed by proton nuclear magnetic resonance ( 1 H NMR), Carbon-13 nuclear magnetic resonance ( 13 C NMR) and Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectroscopy (GC–MS) techniques. The peels of Musa balbisiana Colla furnished 100% conversion of waste cooking oil into biodiesel. Low cost, renewable heterogeneous catalyst from banana (Musa balbisiana Colla) peels can be developed for fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) production providing a new route for sustainability of fuels. 1. Introduction Consumption of energy has become necessary for the functioning of human society, prosperity and survival of the civilization. The de- pendency on the use of energy in the human society in the form of electricity, natural gas, oil etc. has increased which has resulted in disruption of the transportation system as well as lack in electricity and affected economic recession along with several deaths. These issues have met the need for sustainable and secure energy supply (Demirbas, 2007; Knothe et al., 2005; Michaelides, 2012). The exponential increase in using fossil fuel worldwide has confronted the world with the twin crisis of fossil fuel depletion and the increased environmental pollution which has led to a move towards alternative, renewable, efficient, sustainable and cost effective sources (Martini and Schell, 2012). Biodiesel also known as FAME plays an important role in this re- spect as it is believed to be the most feasible alternative energy source for replacing petro-diesel partly due to its better performance, biode- gradability, non-toxic and renewable characteristics associated with its use (Hameed et al., 2009). It is produced by reacting oil or fat with a monohydric alcohol in presence of a catalyst (Boocock et al., 1996; Leung et al., 2010). However, the greatest challenge is its inherent higher price than petro diesel which can be overcome by using low cost feedstocks (oil, catalyst) for its production (Konwar et al., 2014). Conversion of vegetable oils to methyl esters using homogeneous cat- alysts can reach 99% within 1 h. Although transesterification with homogeneous catalysts is very simple and less time consuming, it has disadvantage related with catalyst separation, reusability and its non- renewability. Over the past few decades, heterogeneous catalysts have received greater attention than homogeneous ones for the production of biodiesel (Balbaşi et al., 2011). This is owing to the drawbacks like saponification, higher alcohol-oil molar ratio, excess reactant con- sumption, emulsion formation, corrosion of equipment etc. associated with homogeneous catalysts. On the other hand, the advantages offered by heterogeneous catalysts include unfussy recoverability as well as reusability, less corrosive, easy to handle, no soap formation and pro- duces almost no waste during isolation from the reaction media (Kim et al., 2004). In this context, heterogeneous catalyst derived from bio- mass materials can successfully address these shortcomings (Aransiola et al., 2014; Betiku and Ajala, 2014). Some of the catalysts in the prior art include supported alkali metal catalysts (Xie et al., 2007), mixed metal oxides, alkali and alkaline earth oxides (Kawashima et al., 2008; Singh and Fernando, 2008), dolomites, perovskite type catalysts and zeolites (Brito et al., 2007), Amberlyst-15 (Rahman Talukder et al., 2009), and sulfated zirconia (Muthu et al., 2010). Biodiesel production http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.indcrop.2017.08.006 Received 4 May 2017; Received in revised form 31 July 2017; Accepted 3 August 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: minakshiigohain@gmail.com (M. Gohain). Industrial Crops & Products 109 (2017) 8–18 0926-6690/ © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. MARK