The use of palm oil as hydrocarbon fuel with saponification pretreatment through catalytic cracking with Fe/Cr catalyst

Abstract

The catalytic cracking of palm oil to become hydrocarbon fuel with saponification pretreatment has been done by using Fe/Cr catalyst. Palm oil or triglyceride is very difficult to cut off with metal catalyst so that to do it should use chemical catalyst through saponification pretreatment to form triglyceride acetate salt which will be analyzed its DSC to find out its degradation temperature. Catalytic cracking was made in the acetate salt by using Fe/Cr catalysts in stainless steel receptacle of 304 austenitic types with the most dominant Fe/Cr component. The process of the catalyticcrackingreactionoccurredatthetemperatureof250- 360oC which produced hydrocarbon fuel. The produced hydrocarbon fuel was analyzed by using FTIR which indicated that there was a functional group that stated that distillate produced from catalytic cracking contained hydrocarbon fuel–strong absorption in the wavelength of 2923cm-1 which indicated the existence of alkenes functional group and absorption peak in the area of 992 cm-1and 906cm-1which showed the existence ofC-H group as alkenes. GC-MS analysis was done to identify the compounds found in hydrocarbon fuel obtained from distillate in catalytic cracking. The hydrocarbon fuel contains11.71% of compound1-dodecene (C12H24). The heat of combustion value and Cetane Index of hydrocarbon fuel were 10,896.28 cal/gand 50.9 respectively.