Upgrading Biodiesel into Oxygen-Free Gasoline: New Applications for the FCC-Process

Using vegetable oils as feedstock for fluid catalytic cracking is a promising and sustainable alternative to oils of fossil origin. Depending on the framework conditions, it may be more reasonable to use fatty acid methyl ester (FAME). For this work, different blends of FAME with vacuum gas oil (VGO) were mixed. At a mean riser temperature of 550 °C, pure FAME yielded gasoline (45.7%), crack-gas (18.0%), light cycle oil (LCO) and residue (17.4%) and coke (4.6%). The oxygen contained in the biomass was converted to water (11.9%), CO (2.0%) and CO2 (0.5%). This conversion is one of the key features when using the FCC technology with biomass. The obtained products are therefore free from oxygenates.