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Abstract

In the view of declining fossil fuel energy resources and rising oil prices, it is necessary to develop new ways to satisfy the energy needs and the production of chemicals. An alternative route is the use of biomass, in fact, it can serve as a sustainable source of renewable fuels and high value chemicals and materials [1-2]. Thus new catalysts need to be developed. In particular basic catalysts will play an important role for many reactions involving biomass transformation such as transesterification, dehydration, aldol condensation, or isomerization reactions, for example [3]. Nitrogen-containing carbon nanotubes (N-MWCNT) appear to be a promising basic catalyst [4]. In fact, in contrast to the existing heterogeneous basic catalysts (such as hydrotalcite, MgO, CaO) they are chemically stable and they do not suffer of problem of leaching. In this work we developed a new route to synthesize N-MWCNTs by grafting different ammines (diethyl-ethylamine, ethylamine and pyrrolidine) on the surface of the MWCNTs. Thus we investigated the potential use of N-MWCNTs as solid catalysts in the transesterification of triglycerides, model reaction for basic catalysts. In particular we study the influence of the basicity of the different amines on the catalytic activity and the stability of the catalysts after recycling reactions.