Effect of Catalyst Bed Height on the Yield and Composition of Non-edible Seed Pyrolytic Oil

Abstract

The thermal and catalytic vapour cracking of non-edible seed such as Kassod seed was studied in a fixed bed reactor. The effect of temperature on the yield of pyrolytic liquid was observed from thermal pyrolysis and the optimum temperature was determined. At the optimum temperature catalytic vapour cracking using CaO was studied by varying the catalyst loading as well as the bed height. The effect of catalyst loading and bed height on the yield, fuel properties, distillation temperature and composition of pyrolytic oil were determined. The results confirmed that thermal pyrolysis of Kassod seed at 550 °C yielded 50.21 wt% of pyrolytic liquid containing 39.86 wt% and 10.35 wt% organic and aqueous phase respectively. The highest yield of pyrolytic oil (organic liquid) was 31.2 wt% and 22.95 wt% obtained at 2 wt% loading of catalyst at a bed height of 8.5 cm and 11.1 cm respectively. The effect of catalytic vapour cracking with the variation in the bed height on the fuel properties confirmed that increasing the catalyst bed height raised the basicity of the pyrolytic oil. The gross calorific value of the oil increased at higher wt% of catalyst loading and were better at the catalyst bed height of 11.1 cm. The catalytic vapour cracking enhanced the fuel properties of the pyrolytic oil by the formation of more volatile components in the pyrolytic oil. The variation in the composition of the pyrolytic oil with and without catalyst was confirmed from the GC–MS analysis.