Hydrocracking of crude palm oil to a biofuel using zirconium nitride and zirconium phosphide-modified bentonite

Hasanudin Hasanudin; Wan Ryan Asri; Indah Sari Zulaikha; Cik Ayu; Addy Rachmat; Fahma Riyanti; Fitri Hadiah; Rahadian Zainul; Roni Maryana

doi:10.1039/d2ra03941a

Hydrocracking of crude palm oil to a biofuel using zirconium nitride and zirconium phosphide-modified bentonite

RSC Adv. 2022 Aug 9;12(34):21916-21925. doi: 10.1039/d2ra03941a. eCollection 2022 Aug 4.

Authors

Hasanudin Hasanudin^{1

2}, Wan Ryan Asri^{1

2}, Indah Sari Zulaikha^{1

2}, Cik Ayu^{1

2}, Addy Rachmat^{1

2}, Fahma Riyanti^{1

2}, Fitri Hadiah³, Rahadian Zainul⁴, Roni Maryana⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Science, Universitas Sriwijaya Indralaya 30662 Indonesia hasanudin@mipa.unsri.ac.id.
² Biofuel Research Group, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Science, Universitas Sriwijaya Indralaya 30662 Indonesia.
³ Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Sriwijaya Indralaya 30662 Indonesia.
⁴ Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Science, Universitas Negeri Padang Padang Indonesia.
⁵ Research Center for Chemistry, Indonesian Institute of Sciences Building 452 Kawasan PUSPIPTEK, Serpong Tangerang Selatan Banten Indonesia.

Abstract

In this study, bentonite modified by zirconium nitride (ZrN) and zirconium phosphide (ZrP) catalysts was studied in the hydrocracking of crude palm oil to biofuels. The study demonstrated that bentonite was propitiously modified by ZrN and ZrP, as assessed by XRD, FTIR spectroscopy, and SEM-EDX analysis. The acidity of the bentonite catalyst was remarkably enhanced by ZrN and ZrP, and it showed an increased intensity in the Lewis acid and Brønsted acid sites, as presented by pyridine FTIR. In the hydrocracking application, the highest conversion was achieved by bentonite-ZrN at 8 mEq g^-1 catalyst loading of 87.93%, whereas bentonite-ZrP at 10 mEq g^-1 showed 86.04% conversion, which suggested that there was a strong positive correlation between the catalyst acidity and the conversion under a particular condition. The biofuel distribution fraction showed that both the catalysts produced a high bio-kerosene fraction, followed by bio-gasoline and oil fuel fractions. The reusability study revealed that both the catalysts had sufficient conversion stability of CPO through the hydrocracking reaction up to four consecutive runs with a low decrease in the catalyst activity. Overall, bentonite-ZrN dominantly favored the hydrocracking of CPO than bentonite-ZrP.