The effect of oxygenates structure on their deoxygenation over USY zeolite

Biomass-derived oxygenates are promising future feedstocks for the chemical industry. Fluid catalytic cracking of these feedstocks has the advantage of enabling their deoxygenation without external hydrogen consumption. Six model feedstocks have been tested using the microactivity test with the aim to describe the impact of the feedstock structure on its conversion and product distribution. It has been shown that saturated alcohols are the feedstocks yielding the most valuable iso-alkanes. Fatty acids and triglycerides yielded more aromatics and with increasing molecular weight the formation of di- and polyaromatics was preferred. When unsaturated feedstocks were used instead of the saturated ones, the formation of aromatics was further augmented.

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► Catalytic cracking of fatty alcohols yields higher products than cracking fatty acids.
► The presence of double bonds increases hydrogen transfer and formation of aromatics.
► Oxygenated feedstocks having higher molecular weight yield more di- and polyaromatics due to their thermal pre-cracking.