In the present work, sodium titanate nanotubes doped with potassium were
synthesized by the Kasuga method and tested as catalysts for biodiesel
production. Potassium was added to the nanotubes in order to increase their
basicity and, consequently, improve their performance in the transesterification
of soybean oil with methanol. In the synthesis, the NaOH:KOH molar ratio was
changed from 9:1 to 7:3 in order to increase potassium loadings in the obtained
nanotubular solids. Synthesized catalysts were characterized by N2
physisorption, powder XRD, scanning electron microscopy (SEM-EDX), transmission
electron microscopy (TEM), FT-IR, FT-Raman and CO2
temperature-programmed desorption (CO2-TPD). Obtained results showed
that sodium trititanate nanotubes containing 1.5 wt. % of potassium were
obtained when 10 M alkali solution with NaOH:KOH molar ratio of 9:1 was used. In
this case, the proportion of sodium and potassium in the synthesized material
was similar to that used in the synthesis. An increase in the proportion of KOH
to 20 and 30 molar % in the NaOH-KOH solutions used in the synthesis allowed
obtaining titanate nanotubes with larger potassium loadings (3.2 and 3.3 wt. %,
respectively). As it was expected, potassium addition to the sodium titanate
nanotubes resulted in an increase in the amount of medium and strong basic
sites. Potassium-containing nanotubes showed higher catalytic activity in the
transesterification reaction than the pure sodium counterpart used as a
reference. The best results were obtained with the samples containing 3.2-3.3
wt. % of potassium where a biodiesel yield of about 94-96 % was obtained at 80
°C and 1 h reaction time.