The esterification of lauric acid with methanol could be efficiently catalyzed by ZrOCl2·8H2O, and this reaction was studied to develop a green method for biodiesel production. The influencing factors, such as amount of catalyst, reaction time and molar ratio of acid to methanol, were investigated. The results indicated that the ZrOCl2·8H2O catalyst showed high catalytic activity, and gave a 97.0% methyl laurate conversion rate under the following optimized conditions, viz.: a lauric acid/methanol molar ratio of 1:10, a catalyst dosage of 4%, and a reaction duration of 2 h at methanol refluxing temperature. The catalyst could be easily recovered while its activity could be well retained after three cycles. The ZrOCl2·8H2O catalyst also exhibited excellent catalytic activity for the esterification of different free long-chain fatty acids(including nonedible oils with high acid value) with different short carbon chain alcohols. Therefore, the ZrOCl2·8H2O catalyst has good potential for the synthesis of biodiesel from low-cost feedstocks such as waste vegetable oils and non-edible oils.
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