Insitu upgradation of biocrude vapor generated from non-edible oil cake's hydrothermal conversion over aluminated mesoporous catalysts

• Pongammia pinnata seed cake hydrothermal to biofuel conversion is explored.
• Insitu upgradation of biocrude vapors is studied on mesoporous catalysts.
• 2D and 3D siliceous material of SBA-15, FDU-12 and KIT-6 were synthesized.
• Non aluminated catalyst does not affect the biocrude yield.
• Alumina impregnated catalyst increases the selectivity of desirable hydrocarbons.

In this work, biocrude vapors generated from hydrothermal conversion of Pongammia pinnata cake using high pressure reactor at 400 °C and 25 kg/cm2 were upgraded over three mesoporous catalyst namely SBA-15, KIT-6 and FDU-12. The catalysts were synthesized, aluminated and characterized using X-Ray Diffraction, N2 adsorption-desorption, SEM techniques. A decrease in the surface area was observed on all three mesoporous catalyst after alumina loading with negligible effect on the pore diameter. Purely siliceous catalysts were found to give negligible effect on the yield of different product phases. Alumina supported SBA-15 (SAR 30) was observed as the suitable catalyst as compared to Al/FDU-12 (SAR 30) and Al/KIT-6 (SAR 30) for maximizing the biocrude yield with low heavy hydrocarbons (46.3 ± 2.2%), polyaromatic hydrocarbons (17.1%) and acidic compounds (9.1%) content. Therefore series of SBA-15 were synthesized by varying silicon to alumina ratio between 20 and 50 for maximizing hydrocarbons with boiling cut fractions between 195 and 317 °C corresponding to gasoline range hydrocarbons. Al/SBA-15(SAR 40) was found to give highest biocrude yield (∼34.8%) with highest selectivity towards gasoline fraction (23.7 ± 1.9%). GC/MS analysis was used to confirm the presence of aliphatic and aromatics. Highest asphaltene content was observed with Al/SBA-15 (SAR 50).

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