| Summary: | Used cooking oil (UCO) is a vegetable or animal-based oil that is generated from cooking and frying foods at room temperature. The UCO which mainly consists of fats and oils is originating from the commercial or industrial food processing operation, including the restaurants. The growing of human population has induced a large quantities of UCO. In Malaysia, the disposal of UCO from the households and restaurants into the drainage and soil has become a major problem, which has caused the blockage of drainage and sewer system due to improper disposal of practices of UCO wastewater. Therefore, a study was conducted in order to remove the oil from the UCO wastewater by using the modified kapok fibre (MKF) through the esterification reaction. In this study, the effect of calcium oxide (CaO) catalyst percentages added in the esterification was investigated. Based on the results, the adsorption capacity showed that the MKF was able to adsorb UCO up to 12.46 ± 0.5 (SE) g of oil/g with the oil removal of 27.25% by using 5 wt% CaO. As the percentages of CaO increased to 10 wt% CaO and 15 wt% CaO, both of adsorption capacity and oil removal were increased at 15.26 ± 0.6 (SE) g oil/g (33.37%) and 19.93 ± 1.3 (SE) g oil/g (43.58%), respectively. Therefore, it was found that the increasing in CaO percentages resulted in higher adsorption of UCO and percentage of oil removal. The maximum percentages of CaO was obtained by using 15 wt% CaO, where it gave the highest adsorption capacity and oil removal efficiency. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024.
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