Hydrophobic calcium carbonate: an option for the value-added conversion of wastes resulting from biodiesel production

High production cost is the key issue of biodiesel industry nowadays. To low down the cost, using low-quality lipids feedstock is the most effective way. Two-step process is vastly applied to deal with those low-quality lipids to produce biodiesel. However, environmentally unfriendly wastes are formed during the process. Here we use calcium oxide residue and wastewater from biodiesel production to produce nanostructured calcium carbonate (CaCO₃) by carbonation at ambient temperature. The results show that CaCO₃ is hydrophobic and has broccoli-like morphology. It is made up of many uniform nano-rods, and each rod is composed of smaller particles with diameters about 50 nm. The idea of wastes utilization could make the biodiesel production process environmentally friendly, and the income of the produced CaCO₃ could further low down the cost of biodiesel production.