Microbial lipids are a promising precursor to renewable diesel fuels, but catalytic hydroprocessing of the crude lipid extracts is an under-studied operation. In particular, impurities in the crude extracts can lead to catalyst deactivation. Hydroprocessing of these lipids to green diesel fuel typically comprises deoxygenation (DO) and hydroisomerization (HI) chemistry, and can be conducted in a two-step or one-step configuration. The one-step configuration provides modest advantages in terms of the calculated minimum fuel selling price (MFSP) based on preliminary process modeling and techno-economic analysis (TEA). We have shown that some impurities can be removed from the lipid streams by either acid bleaching with H<sub>3</sub>PO<sub>4</sub> or adsorption bleaching with silica. These cleanup operations did not significantly impact the fuel properties in the two-step operation, at least for short time-on-stream experiments. In contrast, experiments with raw algae oil suggested that one-step DO/HI is more sensitive to impurities.

Catalytic hydroprocessing of algae oils

ACS Spring 2022

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