Hydrodeoxygenation of bio oils to biofuel over al and zr incorporated mesoporous silicates supported ni mo catalysts

Abstract

The advantage of using bio-fuel is that it minimizes air pollution besides having an equal amount of energy similar to that of fossil fuels. Hence, bio-oils have been used as an alternative fuel. The non-edible oils are of different types namely jatropha, Pongamia, Azadirachta indica, Watermelon, Calophyllum inophyllum, Jojoba, Mahua oils and so on. Among them, jatropha, jojoba and watermelon have specific properties and advantages. These oils are produced in large quantities across the world especially in countries like South America, Africa, India, South East Asia, etc. In general, all types of bio-oils consist mainly of hydrogen, oxygen and carbon. Other minor heteroatoms like nitrogen, sulfur are also present in bio-oils. Major compounds present in the bio-oils such as ester linkage of the polymeric unit may depolymerize in the presence of a solid acid catalyst to monomeric units such as free fatty acid. These FFAs have huge oxygen content, and has deleterious properties such as non-volatility, low heating combustion value, low pH, corrosiveness, poor dissolving nature, thermal and chemical instability. Further heteroatoms oxygen, nitrogen and sulfur also affect the fuel properties. However, NOx, SOx and COx are emitted from the fuel in the environment. The removal of such compounds is absolutely essential. The catalytic method is more beneficial because no further treatment is required. The current investigation deals with the development of Ni-Mo catalyst for hydrodeoxygenation of non-edible oils and model compounds. Different experimental methods were adopted for the synthesis of different acid mesoporous supports such as alumino-silicates and zirconia-silicates. The mesoporous acid supports Al-KIT-6(10), Al-SBA- 15(10), Al-FSM16(10), Zr-SBA-15 (10), Zr-KIT-6 (10) Zr-SiO2 (10), Zr- FSM-16 (10) were synthesized using calculated amount of aluminum isopropoxide and ZrOCl as sources of Al and Zr respectively via single-step hydrothermal method. Further, MoO3 -NiO was impregnated on the synthesized supports Al-KIT-6 (10), Al-SBA-15 (10), MAS (10), and Al-FSM-16 (10) by following sequential wet impregnation method. newline