Aviation fuel production from lipids by a single-step route using hierarchical mesoporous zeolites

Abstract

Broader contextJet fuels must meet very stringent international specifications, due to which it is much more difficult to develop an alternative fuel for aviation than for automobile applications. There is no work reported to date on designed catalysts that would maximize the conversion of triglycerides (specifically those from inedible Jatropha and algae oil) into jet-fuel range (kerosene) hydrocarbons. A single step economical process for aviation fuel from lipids has been inconceivable to date. Triglyceride derived kerosene with its low aromatics content and very low sulfur content is also commercially very attractive for its numerous applications as solvent. Here we demonstrate for the first time that hierarchical mesoporous molecular sieves with tunable properties such as zeolitic crystallinity, acidity and porosity could be successfully tailored to develop a single-step process for hydroconversion of triglycerides and free fatty acids from algae and from plants such as Jatropha, directly into isoparaffins in the kerosene range with high selectivity to produce aviation fuel with the desired freezing point and other specifications. This catalytic process makes the route to renewable aviation fuel from lipids more economical and commercially more attractive.

Quantitative conversion of triglycerides to hydrocarbons over hierarchical ZSM-5 catalyst

“…Recently, hydroconversion of triglycerides to produce hydrocarbons has been considered as an alternative way to produce high quality fuel [9]. Desirable products ranging from gasoline to diesel fraction with excellent properties have been obtained with various kinds of catalysts [10][11][12][13][14]. The reaction pathways have also been widely studied using different vegetable oils such as canola oil, sunflower oil, soybean oil, rapeseed oil, and palm oil as well as the fatty acid fraction and/or the mixtures [15].…”

One-step hydrodeoxygenation of palm oil to isomerized hydrocarbon fuels over Ni supported on nano-sized SAPO-11 catalysts

“…Considering economic factor and process efficiency, one-step production of isomeric hydrocarbons by coupling HDO of vegetable oils and isomerization of long nalkanes in one reactor is extremely favorable for this processing. However, isomeric products are susceptible to light alkanes by cracking [19][20][21], resulting in low yields of liquid hydrocarbons especially at high vegetable oil conversions. Comparatively, metal supported on silicoaluminophosphate-11 (SAPO-11) showed the desirable performance for HDO of methyl palmitate [22] and hydroisomerization of long chained n-paraffins [23], owing to its suitable acidity and pore structure.…”

Hydroconversion of Waste Cooking Oil into Green Biofuel over Hierarchical USY-Supported NiMo Catalyst: A Comparative Study of Desilication and Dealumination

“…In these cases, HDO and hydroisomerization-hydrocracking occurred in a reactor. Sinha and co-workers [12] investigated the bio-jet fuel production from jatropha oil Table 1 shows the structure variation of modified USY zeolite by desilication and dealumination. The unit cell size of AHFS-dealuminated USY (AHFS-Y) gradually decreased with the acid treatment due to the removal of the longer Al-O band in the zeolite.…”