Today, supply of energy and direct emission of fossil fuel for energy are the major problems in many countries. Biodiesel is one of the varieties of renewable sources that can increase its useful and biological effect by different strategies. In fact, biodiesel is as a pure diesel fuel from natural and renewable resources such as vegetable oil is made. And catalysts have an important role in production of biodiesel from vegetable oils. In this work, we were studies on alumina and modifying of alumina with zinc and copper oxides and assessment of their activity in esterification of oleic acid to its methyl ester (biodiesel). The microwave solution combustion method is one of method for catalyst preparation which is very fast. The samples (pure and doped Al2O3 by copper oxide and zinc oxide) were characterized by x-ray diffraction, FTIR and scanning electron microscopy. Then, the activity of catalysts was investigated by esterification method. The results showed that the alumina has insignificant activity for biodiesel production. Moreover, alumina doped by zinc oxide as zinc aluminate has higher activity than copper aluminate due to its lower heat of reaction, lower particle size and higher acidity, probably.

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