Novel solid acid catalysts for esterification have been described that were made by incomplete carbonization of expanded starch and dodecylbenzene sulfonic acid. The effects of the molar ratio of alcohol to oleic acid, the mass ration of catalyst to oleic acid，reaction temperatures and reaction time were discussed. The kinetics of esterification of oleic acid with ethanol in the liquid phase catalyzed by carbon-based solid acid was studied under atmospheric pressure. The results of XRD and acid-base titration indicate the incompletely carbonization of the mixtures of expanded starch and p-toluene sulfonic acid results in amorphous carbon consisting of small polycyclic aromatic carbon sheets with high density of —SO₃H groups. The remarkable catalytic activity of this material is attributable to the incorporation of reactants into the bulk structure and the high density of strongly acidic —SO₃H sites. The experimental results show that the conversion of oleic acid is 83.88% by following conditions：molar ratio of ethanol to oleic acid is 8∶1，catalyst mass 1.0 g, refluxe reaction time 6.0 h．It was also found that the reaction depended on temperature. The conversion of oleic acid was found to increase with the temperature increasing from 50 ℃ to 70 ℃. The experimental data were correlated with a first-order pseudohomogeneous kinetic model. The activation energy and pre-exponential factor of this reaction are calculated to be 35.78 kJ/mol and 5.70×10⁴  h^-1, respectively. 

Carbon-based solid acid,   ,  Esterification,   ,  Biodiesel,    ,  Pseudohomogeneous model,    ,  Kinetics