Hydrotreatment of jatropha oil over noble metal catalysts

Abstract

Jatropha oil is a promising nonedible feedstock for producing renewable diesel. In this work, the hydrotreatment processing of jatropha oil was investigated. Instead of using conventional alumina-supported Co–Mo, Ni–Mo, and Ni–W catalysts that need sulfidation pretreatment, noble metals such as Pd and Ru were chosen. Trials were performed in an isothermal trickle-bed reactor and the reaction conditions were as follows: temperature 603–663 K, weight hourly space velocity (WHSV) 1 to 4/h, pressure 1.5–3 MPa, and H2/oil ratio 200–800 (v/v). Yield of n-C15 to n-C18 hydrocarbons was maximized (70.3 and 43.8% for Pd/Al2O3 and Ru/Al2O3, respectively) at the following conditions: T = 663 K, WHSV = 2/h, P = 3 MPa, and H2/oil ratio = 600 (v/v). Since Ru favored cracking reactions to a larger extent than Pd, the yield of C15 to C18 hydrocarbons over Ru/Al2O3 was lowered. Using simple first-order plots for oil conversion, activation energies for the hydrotreating process over Pd/Al2O3 and Ru/Al2O3 were found and they were equal to 109 and 121 kJ/mol, correspondingly.