It is hoped to develop a simple and low cost route for preparing the CaO with a novel morphology which can present high catalytic activity in catalyzing transesterification reaction for biodiesel. The porous CaO microsphere was synthesized by calcining spherical CaCO3 precursor which was prepared easily by mixing CaCl2 with Na2CO3. The as-prepared CaO microsphere was characterized by scanning electronic microscopy(SEM), powder X-ray diffractometry(XRD) and N2 adsorption experiment. The results reveal that the synthesized CaO is regular microsphere with many pores in its exterior and interior. The CaO microsphere is applied in catalyzing the transesterification reaction of soybean oil for biodiesel and presents excellent catalytic ability with a transesterification yield of 98.72%. This catalyst could have potential applications in other fields in view of its well-defined morphology, simply synthetic route and low cost.
A method to determine water content in organic solvents was developed based on the color change of cobalt（Ⅱ） nitrate in different solvents.The color-change mechanism and optimal conditions for determining the water content were investigated.The results showed that there was a good linear relationships between the absorbance of cobalt（Ⅱ） complexes in organic solvents and water contents withγin 0.9989～0.9994.This method has the advantages of low cost,good reproducibility,good sensitivity,simple in operation,fast in detection,friendly to the environment and no limitation on linear range for determining water content.It was used to determine water in samples with a satisfactory recovery in 97.81%～101.24%.
