Catalytic pyrolysis of rapeseed oil to liquid fuels in continuous reactor

Abstract

Catalytic cracking of rapeseed oil to liquid fuel in continuous reactor was divided into 2 parts. The experiments in the first part were done in batch system using 70 mL micro-reactor in order to find the optimal condition of each catalyst which gives highest %yield of liquid product and naphtha. There were 5 catalysts used in this study which included CaO, MgO, HZSM-5, 1%wt Fe/AC and 5%wt Fe/AC. The experiments were done using 2k factorial experimental design. The ranges of variables were as followed: reaction temperature at 390 and 450 °C, reaction time at 30 and 60 minutes, initial hydrogen pressure at 1 and 5 bar and catalyst content at 0.5 and 1.0%wt. The results shown that the catalytic cracking of rapeseed oil over MgO gave the significantly on naphtha, the reaction over HZSM-5 gave the highest yield of small hydrocarbon gas as well as CH4, CO2, CO whereas, the reaction over Fe/AC gave the most yield of diesel. The kinetic study were investigated due to the conversion of long residue with the reaction time over various catalyst. The results illustrated the second order equation with the Ea of 29.497 KJ/mol, 44.616 KJ/mol and 77.314 KJ/mol due to the study of HZSM-5, 1%wt Fe/AC and MgO respectively. The experiments in the second part were to produce liquid fuel in 3 L continuous reactor by using MgO since it gave best %yield of liquid product and naphtha from five catalysts. The ranges of variables were as followed: reaction temperature at 390 and 450 °C, feeding rate at 3 and 9 mL/min, N2 gas flow rate at 50 and 150 mL/min and catalyst content at 30 and 60% V/V. It was found that at reaction temperature of 450 °C, feeding rate 5 mL/min, N2 gas flow rate 150 mL/min and catalyst content 50%V/V gave highest % yield of liquid product and naphtha of 75.44 and 36.62, respectively. The obtained liquid product had heating value of 44.94 MJ/kg, acid value of 1.49 mg KOH/g, viscosity of 0.99 cst, C content of 85.69%wt and the primary functional group were aliphatic hydrocarbons (C-H stretching) 2850-3000 cm-1 as same as gasoline 95.