Abstract
Non-edible sunflower oils that were extracted from sunflower residual wastes were catalytically cracked over a ZSM-5 catalyst in a fixed-bed reactor at three different reaction temperatures: 450°C, 500°C and 550°C. The catalyst was characterized using XRD, FT-IR, BET and SEM. Characterizations of the upgraded sunflower oils, hydrocarbon fuels, distillation residues and non-condensable gases were carried out. The effect of the reaction temperature on the yield and quality of liquid products was discussed. The results showed that the reaction temperature affected the hydrocarbon fuel yield but had a minor influence on its properties. The highest conversion efficiency from sunflower oils to hydrocarbon fuels was 30.1%, which was obtained at 550°C. The reaction temperature affected the component content of the non-condensable gases. The non-condensable gases generated at 550°C contained the highest content of light hydrocarbons (C1C5), CO, CO2 and H2. Compared to raw sunflower oils, the properties of hydrocarbon fuels including the dynamic viscosity, pH, moisture content, density, oxygen content and heating value were improved.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 300-312 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | New Biotechnology |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Mar 5 2015 |
Funding
This study was funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation through NC Sun Grant Initiative under Grant No. SA0700149 . The authors would like to thank Dr Douglas Raynie, Ms Changling Qiu and Ms Shanmugapriya Dharmarajan for helping in the GC/MS measurement, and thank Ms Xiaomin Wang for helping in the BET measurement. The XRD equipment is supported by the NSF MRI grant (Award No. 1229577). All the support in experiment from Mr Yang Gao, Yinbin Huang and Zhongwei Liu is gratefully acknowledged. However, only the authors are responsible for the opinions expressed in this paper and for any possible error.