Conversion of waste cooking oil to jet biofuel with nickel-based mesoporous zeolite Y catalyst

Three types of zeolites (Meso-Y, SAPO-34, and HY) loaded with nickel were used to convert waste cooking oil to jet biofuel. Mesoporous zeolite Y exhibited a high jet range alkane selectivity of 53% and a proper jet range aromatic hydrocarbon selectivity of 13.4% in liquid fuel products. Reaction temperature was optimized to produce quality jet biofuel. Zeolite Meso-Y exhibited a high jet range alkane yield of 40.5% and a low jet range aromatic hydrocarbon yield of 11.3% from waste cooking oil at 400 °C. The reaction pathway for converting waste cooking oil to jet biofuel was proposed. Experimental results showed that waste cooking oil mainly deoxygenated to heptadecane (C17H36) and pentadecane (C15H30) through the decarbonylation pathway for the first 3 h. Long chain alkanes cracked into jet range alkanes (C8-C16). Cycloalkanes and aromatic hydrocarbons were produced through cyclization and dehydrogenation pathways.