J.Kim.Terap.Indones. 21(1), pp. 45 - 54, June 2019 e-ISSN:2527-7669 ”Use of Mg-Al hydrotalcite Catalyst in Biodiesel Production …”: Irvan Maulana Firdaus, et.al. | 45 Use of Mg-Al/hydrotalcite Catalyst in Biodiesel Production from Avocado Seed Oils: A Preliminary Study Irvan Maulana Firdaus 1* , Tri Fitriany 1 , Milda Nurul Hidayah 1 , Agus Soleh 1 , Khilman Husna Pratama 2 , Febiyanto 3 1) Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Universitas Jenderal Soedirman, Jalan Dr. Soeparno Karangwangkal Purwokerto, 53123, Indonesia 2) Department of Pharmacy, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Universitas Jenderal Soedirman, Jalan Dr. Soeparno Karangwangkal Purwokerto, 53123, Indonesia 3) Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Jalan Sekip Utara Yogyakarta, 55281, Indonesia *Corresponding author : irvanmaulanafirdaus@gmail.com, febiyanto@mail.ugm.ac.id Abstract Biodiesel production from avocado seed oils has been carried out using the heterogeneous catalyst of Mg-Al/hydrotalcite. Transesterification process was conducted by varying temperature reaction and oil-methanol molar ratio. The reaction temperature was 30, 40, 50, and 60°C, whereas the oil-methanol molar ratio was 1:3, 1:6, 1:9, and 1:12, respectively. The as-synthesized Mg- Al/hydrotalcite catalyst was characterized using X-ray diffraction and FTIR. Meanwhile, the biodiesel was analyzed their density, viscosity, water content, and 1 H-NMR analysis. The results showed that optimum condition in biodiesel production was the oil-methanol molar ratio of 1:6 at a reaction temperature of 60°C for 60 minutes and catalyst quantity of 2% yielding biodiesel conversion percentage was approximately 15.90%. However, these preliminary findings showed that Mg-Al/hydrotalcite was able to convert the avocado seed oils into biodiesel even if still need further analysis and research so that produces a higher percentage of biodiesel conversion. © 2019 Indonesian Journal of Applied Chemistry. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-SA license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/). 1. INTRODUCTION Nowadays, the increase of human population in line with high demand and use of energy resources have decreased the non-renewable fossil-energy reservation [1]. Notably, it was predicted that can only exist in less than 50 years later [2]. Therefore, the limited availability of those has forced researches and industry players around the world searching for new and renewable energy for the energy needs in the near future. Renewable energy such as biodiesel is one of the alternatives and green fuels which was widely explored and investigated because of its raw material availability; environmental friendly; low-pollution emission; a consideration in green-fuels for climate change prevention; in vehicles, an unwanted modified of machine was not required; well-performance because of high cetane number; no need lubricant addition for high purity grade of biodiesel; more efficient than fossil resources based fuels [3]. Biodiesel is defined as long-chain of monoalkyl ester of fatty acid derived from renewable fat. It was similar to vegetable and animal fat [4]. In addition, Santoso et al. [5], it is a mixture of monoalkyl ester of fatty acid and vegetable and animal fat. As-reported raw materials for biodiesel production have been established such as plant or vegetable [6,7], animal fat [8-10], macro- and microalgae [11,12], wastes [13-18], and so on. However, plant oil-based biodiesel synthesis has promising A R T I C L E I N F O Article history: Received date: 28 April 2019 Revised date: 1 May 2019 Accepted date: 24 June 2019 Available online at : http://inajac.lipi.go.id/ Keywords: Avocado seed oils, biodiesel, Mg-Al/hydrotalcite catalyst, renewable and green fuels