Bio-oil, produced from fast pyrolysis of biomass, is considered to a promising alternative fuel. However, it is true that some drawbacks, such as high water content, acidity, oxygen level, viscosity and low heating value make it hard to utilization of bio-oil for commercial engine. To overcome those disadvantageous features of bio-oil, upgrading process is essential.<br/>Hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) is one of the most effective hydrotreatment processes to reduce the high oxygen content in bio-oil in the presence of suitable catalysts and hydrogen. Although noble metal catalyst presented remarkable hydrodeoxygenation activity, it was economically infeasible due to high price. Therefore, preparation of cheap catalyst for replacement of noble metal catalyst is necessary for broadening application potentials of bio-oil.<br/>In this study transition bimetal catalysts supported on Al-SBA-15 (NiCu/Al-SBA-15, NiMn/Al-SBA-15, and NiZn/Al-SBA-15) were prepared by sol-gel method and wet impregnation method. The morphology of the catalysts was investigated by SEM, BET, XRD and XPS to estimate whether the supports have well-organized structure and metals were uniformly dispersed.<br/>The HDO reaction of bio-oil (supplied from bioliq) was performed with the transition bimetallic catalysts at various reaction temperature (250, 300, or 350°C). During the HDO reaction, bio-oil was converted into gas, light oil, heavy oil, and char. The target product - heavy oil - was separated and the fuel properties such as water content, acidity, viscosity and oxygen content was analysed.<br/>The heavy oil yielded ca. 40.3-60.6 wt.%, while char yield ranged 8.2-22.3 wt.%. HDO reaction with transition bimetallic catalysts clearly led to improvement of fuel properties of bio-oil. Basically, water content and oxygen content in the heavy oil decreased from 11.7 to 2.0-4.5 wt.% and from 46.2 to 26.6-34.6 wt.%, respectively, resulting in an increase of heating value. Viscous feature causing injection problem during engine application was also improved. During the HDO reaction, oxygenated compounds in bio-oil, which could result in instability during the storage, were converted into the stable compounds.

Preparation of bimetallic catalysts and activity test on hydrodeoxygenative upgrading of bio-oil

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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