The conversion of biomass primary vapors over several zeolites with different, was used to investigate the effect of acidity on rates of deactivation for the catalyst. Experiments were conducted using a horizontal packed bed reactor in which pulses of 50 mg of biomass were pyrolyzed and the vapors were upgraded over 0.5 g of the catalyst and the products were measured with a molecular beam mass spectrometer (MBMS). In all of these experiments, real-time measurements of the products formed were conducted as the catalyst aged and deactivated during upgrading. The results from these experiments show that; 1) Fresh catalyst produced primarily aromatic hydrocarbons and olefins with no detectable oxygen-containing species. 2) After pyrolysis of some biomass samples, oxygenated products start to appear in the product stream. This suite of oxygen containing products took longer to appear for catalysts with high acidity. This is because catalyst with low acidity appears to have higher rates of deactivation compared to catalysts with high acidity.

Effect of catalyst acidity on product speciation and coking rates

247th National Meeting (2014)

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