Mg/SiO2–Al2O3 supported nickel catalysts for the production of naphthenic hydrocarbon fuel by hydro-de-oxygenation of eugenol

Abstract

Ni–Mg supported on both mesoporous Al2O3–SiO2 (10) and γ-Al2O3 with Al2O3–SiO2/Mg = 10 and γ-Al2O3/Mg = 10 ratio were prepared via wet impregnation method. The synthesized materials were characterized by XRD, N2-sorption study, NH3-TPD/H2-TPR, FT-IR, DRS-UV and used in hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) of eugenol to produce hydrocarbons in a high pressure reactor. The reactant molecules could be facilitated to yield hydrocarbon fuel by active nickel active sites. The high oxygen removal efficiency of 75% was achieved with C9 hydrocarbon selectivity. Evaluation of catalytic properties such as high hydrogen consumption of 145 μmol/g (H2-TPR) and enriched surface acidity of 2.35 mmol g−1 (NH3-TPD) was done. Ni/Mg-SA (10) exhibited the highest catalytic activity of 6.7 × 10−4 mol g−1 s−1 SRR and 10.27 s−1 TOF respectively. The stability of catalysts was found to be 185 mg/g for Ni/Mg-SA (10) catalyst by TGA analysis. The structure-activity relationship was studied and the product distributions were also discussed in detail.