Thermal decarboxylation of coconut fatty acid distillate to hydrocarbons using bentonite as catalyst at ambient pressure

Date

4-2014

Degree

Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering

College

College of Engineering and Agro-Industrial Technology (CEAT)

Adviser/Committee Chair

Denise Ester O. Santiago

Abstract

Current deoxygenation studies involve the use of hydrogen, expensive metal and operation at high temperature and pressure. Although experiments show impressive especially those involving palladium catalysts, the conditions and materials used are still the same with current jet fuel production process. Deoxygenation via catalytic decarboxylation using materials is seen another possible route for production of hydrocarbons. The catalytic ability using this type of material was observed from geochemical studies to proceed under mild operating temperature and at ambient pressure. The catalytic decarboxylation of coconut fatty acid distillate was performed using the mineral bentonite as catalyst under suspended flask batch experiments and ambient pressure. the experiments were limited to one hour of reaction to observe and study the initial reaction rates of the process. It was observed that the best reaction system set-up at 200ºC involved the reaction mixture involving the addition of a catalyst and solvent, having the highest conversion values of 7.74% and 8.22%, respectively. The results also showed that conversions were improved by increasing the temperature from 150ºC to 200ºC and decreasing the solvent concentration from 86.96% to 80%, wherein the highest observed conversion was at an average of 36%. The change in catalyst loading from 30% to 40% catalyst-to-feed ratio did not have any significant effect on the fatty acid conversion due to the abundance of possible sites for reaction from the amount of loadings used. It was confirmed that decarboxylation of fatty acids was possible at mild operating conditions using bentonite as catalyst.

Language

English

Location

UPLB Main Library Special Collections Section (USCS)

Call Number

LG 993.5 2014 E62 F67

Document Type

Thesis

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