Interface-Driven Carbon–Inorganic Hybrid Catalysts for Biodiesel Production from Low-Grade Lipid Feedstocks: Acid–Base Chemistry, Mass-Transfer Control, Heterogeneity, and Stability

Abstract

Biodiesel production from waste cooking oils, non-edible oils and other low-grade lipid feedstocks is constrained by free fatty acids, water, salts, oxidation products, and the poor miscibility of triglycerides with short-chain alcohols. Carbon–inorganic hybrid catalysts are attractive because the inorganic phase can provide strong acid or base sites, while the carbon phase can alter dispersion, wettability, pore accessibility, microenvironment polarity, leaching, and recovery. Yet the term hybrid is often applied to materials for which the carbon component has not been shown to affect catalysis. This critical review therefore focuses on one defined reaction scenario: esterification and transesterification for biodiesel production from low-grade lipid feedstocks. The discussion is organized by the catalytic problem rather than by an unrestricted catalogue of materials. Carbon-supported CaO and MgO, carbon-coupled layered-double-hydroxide-derived mixed oxides, sulfonated carbon–inorganic acids, bifunctional acid–base systems, magnetically recoverable ferrite/carbon catalysts, and graphenic supports are compared through structure–activity relationships, reaction conditions, feedstock quality, FAME yield, heterogeneity, reusability, and post-reaction evidence. Particular attention is given to the distinction between a true interfacial effect and activity caused by leached Ca, K, Na or sulfonic species. A minimum evidence hierarchy is proposed, requiring carbon-only, inorganic-only, and physical-mixture controls, hot-filtration tests, elemental analysis of the liquid phase, recovered-mass accounting, and post-reaction structural characterization. The literature shows that high first-cycle yield is common, whereas water tolerance, low leaching, retained active-site density, and continuous operation remain uncommon. The most defensible future direction is therefore not greater compositional complexity, but simpler hybrid architectures designed around a specific failure mode and validated under realistic feedstock and reactor conditions.