Transformation of Bioderived 1-Decanol to Diesel-like Fuel and Biobased Oil via Dehydration and Oligomerization Reactions

Abstract

The production of diesel-like fuel and base oil from bioderived fatty alcohol through a two-steps process, dehydration reaction and oligomerization reaction, was studied. The bioderived 1-decanol was converted to olefin mixtures and di-n-decyl ether via the dehydration over commercial γ-alumina catalysts with and without acid modification in a fixed-bed reactor at different temperatures. The catalysts studied were characterized using nitrogen adsorption, temperature-programmed desorption, X-ray diffraction, and thermogravimetric analysis. The dehydration reaction over the unmodified Al 2 O 3 was found to be dominant toward the selectivity for 1-decene. The modified Al 2 O 3 was shown to promote skeletal internal isomerization and cracking reaction due to strong acid sites. Furthermore, the stability testing results of 1.5 M (H 2 SO 4 )/Al 2 O 3 at 573 K demonstrated a rapid deactivation of strong acid sites during the first 10 h of operation. Oligomerization of mixed olefins (1decanol, 1-decene, and internal olefin) over USY zeolite was found to give the highest conversion of 60%, compared to other zeolites, and the selectivities for dimers, trimers, and heavier hydrocarbons were 72, 24, and 4%, respectively. Evaluation of oligomers properties such as viscosity, viscosity index, simulation distillation, and pour point indicated that dimers and heavier hydrocarbons after hydrogenation can be used as transportation fuel and biobased oil.

Kinetic Study on Microwave-Assisted Oligomerization of 1-Decene over a HY Catalyst

“…For any given reaction time (lower than 120 min), an increase in reaction temperature significantly enhanced the conversion of 1-decene. This result corresponded well with our previous investigation on the 1-decene oligomerization [4,5]. The higher the reaction temperature, the shorter the reaction time to reach the highest conversion of 1-decene.…”

“…In Lewis acid catalysis, oligomerization is activated by a hydrogen donor agent such as water, called cationic oligomerization [3]. Other agents for oligomerization include heterogeneous acid catalysts such as sulfatedalumina [1], tungsten-zirconia [4] and zeolite [5] that are cheaper than other types of catalysts. One important feature of zeolite catalysts is that their inner structure can be manipulated to tailor products [6,7], while spent zeolite catalysts can be simply regenerated via chemical or thermal treatment [8].…”

Fair Look at Coordination Oligomerization of Higher α-Olefins

“…However, lower α-olefin oligomers obtained by cationic oligomerization were exceedingly defined as structurally uniform reaction products [16,17]. Moreover, most of the recent publications devoted to the oligomerization of higher α-olefins have discussed acid-catalyzed processes [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32].…”

The Investigation of Heat Absorber on the Efficiency of Slanted Double-Slope Solar Distillation Unit

“…(11), productivity can be predicted by plugging in the operating time of the distillation unit. Comparison between experimental data and productivity calculated by the polynomial equation produced R 2 very close to 1 which suggested that these predictions were accurate [21,22]. Productivity=4x10 -7 to 6 -3x10 -5 to 5 +0.0008to 4 -0.0096to 3 + 0 .…”