Investigating the effect of Cu/zeolite on deoxygenation of bio-oil from pyrolysis of pine wood

Ravinder Kumar*, Vladimir Strezov, Tao Kan, Haftom Weldekidan, Jing He

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalConference paperpeer-review

    18 Citations (Scopus)
    112 Downloads (Pure)

    Abstract

    Pyrolysis is one of the significant technologies that can utilize lignocellulose biomass to produce different bioenergy fuels, such as bio-oil, pyrolytic gases and bio-char. The application of pyrolysis has been extensively studied to produce bio-oil, which is foreseen as the potential transportation fuel in the near future. However, the presence of oxygenated compounds, such as phenols and alcohols in bio-oil makes it highly acidic and unstable for a suitable transportation fuel. These oxygenated compounds can be converted to refinable hydrocarbons by using different catalysts. Therefore, this study aimed to prepare a catalyst that is Cu10%-zeolite and investigated its deoxygenation activity for bio-oil produced from pyrolysis of pine wood sawdust. The catalyst was prepared by a wet-impregnation method. Subsequently, the catalyst was characterized by X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy. Furthermore, the catalyst was applied for in-situ (catalyst: Biomass=5) and ex-situ catalytic pyrolysis (catalyst: Biomass=3) and the results were compared with those from sole zeolite support. The pyrolysis process was carried out at a heating rate of 100 °C/min to a final temperature of 700 °C and the composition of bio-oil was examined by gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy. The results revealed that Cu-zeolite showed significant deoxygenation activity for bio-oil as compared to zeolite or without any catalyst. Evidently, Cu-zeolite after in-situ pyrolysis produced bio-oil with 20.9% aromatic hydrocarbons and 7.5% aliphatic hydrocarbons, which were approximately 80% and several times higher than with only zeolite, respectively. Meanwhile the concentration of alcohols was reduced from 47.5% to 5%. On the other hand, bio-oil produced from ex-situ catalytic pyrolysis was enriched with 41.6% aromatic hydrocarbons while only 1% alcohols were present in bio-oil. This promising deoxygenation activity can be ascribed to Cu-zeolite's catalytic activity that converted phenol and alcohols to refinable hydrocarbons via various reactions, such as dehydration, decarboxylation and decarbonylation.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)186-193
    Number of pages8
    JournalEnergy Procedia
    Volume160
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2019
    Event2nd International Conference on Energy and Power, ICEP2018 - Sydney, Australia
    Duration: 13 Dec 201815 Dec 2018

    Bibliographical note

    Copyright the Author(s) 2019. Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher.

    Keywords

    • Bio-oil upgrading
    • Catalytic pyrolysis
    • Cu-zeolite
    • Pine wood

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