An investigation of green diesel produced through hydro-processing of waste cooking oil using an admixture of two heterogeneous catalysts

Abstract

ABSTRACTEnergy crisis, global warming, and rapid depletion of fossil fuel reservoirs are knocking the door for alternative fuel. This study explores the hydro-processing of waste cooking oil using mixtures of two heterogeneous catalysts (admixture of calcium oxide and biomass-based thermal power plant fly ash (​BBTPFS)) in different proportions (10, 20, 30, and 40% of CaO in BBTPFS by wt%) to analyze the effect on the yield of bio-crude, organic liquid fraction (OLF), and acidity index. The high-pressure high-temperature reactor was used for hydro-processing, and True Boiling Point (TBP) distillation unit was used for fractional distillation of the bio-crude obtained within the boiling range, 35–140°C, 140–180°C, 180–370°C, and 370–482°C as per ASTM D2892 and ASTM D5236 specification. The yield of bio-crude and OLFs and their characterization have been analyzed and compared with literature work. It was observed that 20 wt% of CaO in BBTPFS catalyst was the optimized admixture to obtain the maximum yield of bio-crude (93.85 vol%) and OLFs (66.29 vol%) with lower acidity index.