Transformation of Jatropha Oil into High-Quality Biofuel over Ni-W Bimetallic Catalysts

Rui Yang; Xiangze Du; Xin Zhang; Hui Xin; Keyao Zhou; Dan Li; Changwei Hu

doi:10.1021/acsomega.9b00375

Transformation of Jatropha Oil into High-Quality Biofuel over Ni-W Bimetallic Catalysts

ACS Omega. 2019 Jun 18;4(6):10580-10592. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.9b00375. eCollection 2019 Jun 30.

Authors

Rui Yang¹, Xiangze Du¹, Xin Zhang¹, Hui Xin², Keyao Zhou¹, Dan Li¹, Changwei Hu^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Green Chemistry and Technology, Ministry of Education, College of Chemistry, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610064, China.
² College of Chemical Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China.

Abstract

The production of fuel from the hydrodeoxygenation of vegetable oils has been extensively investigated on account of the decline of petroleum-based fuels and increase of ecological problems. The conversion of jatropha oil over Al-MCM-41-supported Ni, W, and Ni-W catalysts was studied at 3 MPa and 360 °C. Over the monometallic Ni and W catalysts, the biofuel yield was low, about 19.3 and 12.5 wt %, respectively, whereas the highest biofuel yield reached 63.5 wt % over the Ni-W bimetallic catalysts. X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and high-resolution TEM results suggested that the proper amount of Ni and W would form a Ni₁₇W₃ active phase, the particle size of which varied with the content of Ni and W or preparation methods. The crystalline Ni₁₇W₃ phase formed when the content of both Ni and W reached 10%. With further increase of the content of W or Ni to 15%, the crystal size of Ni₁₇W₃ grew from 7 to 14 nm or to 20 nm, whereas the biofuel yield decreased with the increase of the Ni₁₇W₃ crystal size. The 10Ni-10W/Al-MCM-41 catalyst with the Ni₁₇W₃ crystal size of 7 nm showed the best performance for the transformation of jatropha oil into high-grade biofuel.