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

•SAPO-11 with sizes of 20–50 nm were hydrothermally synthesized.•The physicochemical properties of nano-sized SAPO-11 were characterized.•The Ni/nano-SAPO-11 showed superior performance in HDO of palm oil to alkane fuels.•This is due to the high mesoporosity of support and its strong interaction with Ni.

Nano-sized SAPO-11s were hydrothermally synthesized with using di-n-propylamine (DPA) as structure-directing agent in mixed n-tetradecanoamine–n-propanol–H2O medium and the Ni/SAPO-11 catalysts were prepared by incipient wetness impregnation. The catalysts was characterized by XRD, SEM, BET, H2-TPR, NH3-TPD and TG techniques and their catalytic performance was tested in hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) of palm oil to hydrocarbon fuels. Surfactant n-tetradecanoamine could mediate the minimum SAPO-11 sizes into 20–50 nm. As comparing to the commercial SAPO-11, the nano-sized SAPO-11s presented significantly enlarged surfaces and mesoporous volumes, which offered sufficient space and strong interactions for dispersing Ni. One-step HDO of palm oil demonstrated that the nano-sized SAPO-1 supported Ni catalysts showed the high yield (80%) of liquid hydrocarbons, high isomerization selectivity (80%) and excellent stability due to that the catalyst presented appropriate acidity, higher Ni dispersity, balance of metal (Ni) and acid (SAPO-11) functionalities and fast diffusion for bulky palm oil and products. These promotion effects observed over the nano-sized SAPO-11 supported Ni catalysts indicated the potential application in biorefinery of vegetable oils to hydrocarbon fuels.

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