The production of Bio-Jet fuel from palm fatty acid distiliate over covalt and nickel supported HZSM-12 catalysts

Abstract

Aviation sector becomes one of the largest-developing public transportation nowadays, the number of air passangers always increases year by year. However, this number are proportionally related to the enhance of jet-fuel worldwide demand. The conventional jet-fuel are commonly known as a carbon dioxde emission source and the world has more concern to this pollutant due to its contribution to the climate change. The usage of renewable materials to produce jet fuel is more glanced. One of the renewable sources can be used to generate green jet fuel is palm fatty acid distillate (PFAD) which is a by-product of palm oil production. This bio-jet fuel is converted via hydrogenation and isomerization reaction by using HZSM-12 catalyst which is a one dimensional zeolite structure. Cobalt (Co), nickel (Ni), and bimetallic Co-Ni were used to increase the catalyst activity. The catalysts prepared by various methods i.e. incipient wetness impregnation, ion exchange, and melt infiltration. The best metal used in this study to produce high selectivity of bio-jet fuel is cobalt with selectivity about 44.6% followed by bimetallic Co-Ni (32.8%) and Nickel (30.3%) under identical condition. Based on the experiment, Co/HZSM-12 prepared via melt infiltration showed the highest selectivity of bio-jet fuel which was 55.5% followed by incipient wetness impregnation 51.6% and ion exchange 50.5%. The optimum condition gained for this reaction was 350 °C, 20 bar and LHSV of 1.5 h⁻¹. In addition, Co/HZSM-12 exhibited higher selectivity to bio-jet fuel (51.6%) than Co/HZSM-22 (31.1%) under identical condition and preparation.