Bio-oil produced from fast pyrolysis of renewable energy feedstocks are chemically complex organic liquids and contains more than 300 different organic compounds. Due to this complex nature, bio-oils have numerous negative properties that includes high acidity, high water content, variable viscosity and heating values about half that of diesel fuel. These negative properties are largely related to the oxygenated compounds contained in bio-oils that result in a 45% oxygen content. It is universally agreed that for the production of a viable fuel, the pyrolysis oil must be upgraded. The present upgrading technologies such as hydrodeoxygenation consumes very high quantities of hydrogen for the fuel production as well as early catalyst deactivation during the process. To solve these issues, we employed a patented catalytic olefination process to raw bio-oil to produce a boiler fuel with improved fuel quality and better physical/chemical properties. This method yields fuel of 60 wt% and It contains high heating value of 34 MJ/kg, zero water content and 90% decrease in viscosity when compared with bio-oil. Further all the samples were analyzed by NMR, GC-MS, FTIR and elemental analysis.

Novel methods to produce biofuels from bio-oil derived from fast pyrolysis of biomass

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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