Production of gasohol from isobutanol

Abstract

Butanol is a four carbon chain alcohol compound of a non-polar used as a solvent and as an intermediate in several consumer products. It can be produced from petrochemical process route as well as biochemical process. A common petrochemical route to produce butanol is hydroformylation of propylene as primary feedstock followed by hydrogenation. The increasing demand for butanol and the scarcity of petrochemical basestock has put the urgent need for a renewable resource of butanol production. Biobutanol is butanol produced from renewable, biological feedstock through fermentation of plant materials types of food, non-food and biomass. One isomer of butanol which is more similar with gasoline property is isobutanol. The use of isobutanol is commonly as solvent in coatings industry, as lacquers, melamine or phenolic resin. Isobutanol can be potentially used as a gasoline blending component, and it is better than ethanol due to its higher heating value, lower volatility and less corrosive. A brief review of process technology for butanol production is outlined in this paper. The benefit of isobutanol over ethanol was also overviewed. In order to prove the compatibility on fuel application, the production of gasohol was carried out by mixing isobutanol and base gasoline, then evaluated according to commercial fuel specification. From the research work, it has been shown that the addition of isobutanol in base gasoline by certain volum fraction has met the typical fuel specifications used for spark-ignition engine. The physical and chemical properties of the mixture was quite similar to gasoline 88 and gasoline 92 specifications.