Fossil energy sources are currently decreasing, requiring the development of alternative energy sources. Vegetable oil is a raw material for alternative renewable energy supplies. This study produced biofuels from vegetable oil using calcium carbonate (CaCO3)-impregnated HY catalysts. In addition, this study aimed to investigate the effect of CaCO3 impregnation on the surface area and the catalytic activity of catalysts in the palm oil cracking process to produce biofuels. The HY catalyst was modified by the wet impregnation method in 5 wt% CaCO3 solution and was further calcined at 550°C for three h. Furthermore, the catalysts were tested in a continuous fixed-bed catalytic reactor at 450°C. The catalyst properties were characterized using Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area, Barrett–Joyner–Halenda (BJH) for pore size distribution, and X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) for crystal structure and phases. The results showed that the addition of CaCO3 decreased surface area and pore volume; however, the pore size increased, which resulted in the production of heavy hydrocarbons. Interestingly, the introduction of CaCO3 enhanced the yield of Organic Liquid Product (OLP) and diesel-range hydrocarbons selectivity to reach 79.09% and 30.54%, respectively. Furthermore, the introduction of CaCO3 increased deoxygenation activity.
Plastic is materials that are not easily broken down, so it can cause a variety of complex problems such as loss of natural resources, environmental pollution, and depletion of landfill space. Plastic favored by the public is Polypropylene (PP) and High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) for example, food storage, transparent drinking glasses and drinking bottles for babies. This will be a problem in the future. Some alternatives used to reduce the volume of plastic waste are the thermal transformation process which is divided into three types of processing, namely combustion, gasification, and pyrolysis. Pyrolysis is a process of thermal degradation of long chains into smaller molecules. The process of pyrolysis in this study used a variety of catalysts (without catalyst, 5%, 10%, 15%, and 20%) and used variations in particle size, namely size I (30 cm3); size II (7.5 cm3); size III (1,875 cm3) weighing 350 grams of plastic cups and 350 grams of bottle caps. Pyrolysis run for 100 minutes and took the result of pyrolysis every 20 minutes interval. The test carried out by using proximate analysis, fuel specification analysis, and GC-MS. Based on the result of research conducted on the pyrolysis process of a mixture of HDPE and PP variations of catalysts, it obtained optimum liquid and gas yields of 98.57% and 1.43%. Besides, in the size variation, the optimum liquid and gas yield was 96.57% and 3.43%. The proximate result has fulfilled the conditions set by the value of ash content, fly substance, and carbon bound 0.15%; 99.57%; 0.28%. In the GC-MS (Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry) test the highest % area was 39.18% with C9H18 or 2,4-dimethyl-1-heptane compounds. The best simulation result obtained the value of activation energy and reaction speed for liquid and gas in the variation of the catalyst of (87,930.07; 101,527.17) J/mol and (2.03 x 102; 3.74 x 103).
Palm oil is a promising raw material for biofuel production using the simultaneous catalytic mechanism of the bifunctional cracking-deoxygenation reactions. Through the cracking-deoxygenation process, the chains of palmitic acid and oleic acid in the palm oil were converted to diesel-range hydrocarbons. The combination effects of CaCO3 and HY zeolite enhanced the bifunctional catalytic cracking-deoxygenation of palm oil into biofuel, because of the increasing acid and basic sites in the catalysts due to the synergistic roles of CaCO3 and HY. The introduction of CaCO3 on HY zeolite generated both a strong acid and strong basic sites simultaneously on the designed catalyst, which supports the bifunctional mechanisms of hybrid cracking-deoxygenation, respectively. The CaCO3 impregnated on the HY catalyst has a synergistic and bifunctional effect on the catalyst supporting cracking-deoxygenation reaction mechanisms as mentioned previously. The deoxygenation reaction required the bifunctional strong acid and strong basic sites on the CaCO3/HY catalyst through decarboxylation, decarbonylation, and hydrodeoxygenation reaction mechanisms. Meanwhile, the cracking reaction pathway was supported by the strong acid sites generated on the CaCO3/HY catalyst. In other words, the high acidity strength promotes diesel selectivity, whereas the high strength of basicity leads to the deoxygenation reaction.
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