Aviation fuel is specific liquid oil requiring high heating value and energy density, it mainly consists of C8-16 alkanes, alkenes and aromatic hydrocarbons, is produced from crude oil. Up to now, aviation fuels cannot be replaced by any industrial scale bio-fuel. Microalgae has been regarded as a promising feedstock for bio-fuels because of its rapid growth rate, few land requirement and high oil content. In this work, we found that aviation fuels could be synthesized directly from microalgae lipids in water over Pt/C catalyst without additional hydrogen. After directly decarboxylated at 330 and 370 �C for 120 min, the oxygen content of microalgae lipids was significantly reduced and heating value was increased. The reaction mechanism of direct decarboxylation of microalgae lipids aviation fuels was further investigated using each of those representative compounds in microalgae lipids, such as methyl laurate, methyl eicosanoate, methyl stearate, ethyl stearate, and tristearin as a single feed under the same reaction conditions. Those reaction conditions, such as solvent, water loading, catalyst loading and reactant loading were optimized. Furthermore, It was concluded that water is more favorable for the selective decarboxylation of methyl stearate among those tested solvents, the catalytic decarboxylation rate of fatty acid ester with larger carbon number in water was faster than those with smaller carbon number, and Pt/C catalyst kept its activity at the third recycles. These results provide a new insight for the decarboxylation of the microalgae lipids to aviation fuels.

Hydrothermal production of aviation fuels from fatty acid esters and microalgae lipids

248th National Meeting (2014)

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