Pyrolysis of empty fruit bunches to bio-oil using combination of ZSM-5 and spent FCC catalysts

Abstract

The objectives of this work were to generate bio-oil with optimum yield and specifications, by studying the effect of catalysts of ZSM-5 and spent FCC, the effect of combination of ZSM-5 and spent FCC catalysts, and the characteristics of bio-oil produced. In this work, the effect of combination of the two catalysts was studied with variation of weight ratio of ZSM-5 to spent FCC catalyst at 10:90, 20:80, 30:70, 40:60 and 50:50. The temperature was set at 400 and 500 °C. The weight ratio of empty fruit bunches to the catalyst was 10:1. The results show weight ratios of combination of ZSM-5 and spent FCC of 10:90 and 50:50 at temperature of 500 °C are the best two combination ratios giving high yield of bio-oil products of 48.88 % and 47.49 %. Bio-oil resulted from combination of ZSM-5 and spent FCC catalysts with weight ratio of 50:50 at 500 °C and weight ratio of 20:80 at 400 °C showed two highests selectivity of phenolic compounds with peak area of 59.85 % and 55.63 % respectively, with heating value of 26.94 MJ/kg and 24.28 MJ / kg, respectively and average density of the two results at 1.03 g/cm3.