Abstract
A promising alternative to the first generation of bio-fuels is to produce mixed bio- and fossil fuels by co-processing mixtures of biomass pyrolysis oil with crude oil fractions obtained from distillation in a conventional oil refinery. This was demonstrated to be technically feasible for fluid catalytic cracking (FCC), which is the main refinery process for producing gasoline. However, co-processing leads to more coke formation and to a more aromatic gasoline fraction. A detailed understanding is necessary on how the oxygenated moieties effect the reaction mechanism to further improve the process/catalysts. Moreover, for technical and marketing reasons, it is absolutely required to accurately determine the proportion of renewable molecules in the commercialized products. The carbon-14 method (also called radiocarbon or 14C) has been used as the most accurate and powerful method to discriminate fossil carbon from bio-carbon, since fossil fuel is virtually 14C-free, while biofuel contains the present-day “natural” amount of 14C. This technique has shown that not all FCC products share bio-carbon statistically. The coke formed during a FCC cycle and to a lesser extent the gases are found richer in 14C than gasoline. This result gives valuable information on the co-processing mechanism, supporting that the bio-oil oxygenated molecules are processed more easily at the expenses of the crude oil hydrocarbons, favouring the bio-coke and the bio-light gases production.
Highlights
In the decades to come, due to market and environmental concerns supported by international regulations, alternative resources will progressively, but partly, substitute fossil crude oil for the production of fuels and chemicals
The radiocarbon method by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) has been used to determine the bio-carbon contents in the products obtained from the fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) co-processing of vacuum gas oil (VGO) and hydrodeoxygenated pyrolysis oil (HDO-oil), according to a protocol developed in our group that we previously reported in ref
As reported in ref. 9 and 10 co-processing of HDO-oil–VGO mixtures by catalytic cracking lead to practically similar gasoline yields, but to more coke, carbon dioxide and water production, with less hydrogen compared to processing of pure VGO
Summary
In the decades to come, due to market and environmental concerns supported by international regulations, alternative resources will progressively, but partly, substitute fossil crude oil for the production of fuels and chemicals. Among the main candidates are natural gas, coal and biomass, while only fuels produced from biomass can secure the energy supply in the long term, since they are renewable They do not contribute to an increase of the global CO2 emission,[1] as no transformation of stored fossil carbon takes place. A promising alternative is to produce hybrid bio/ fossil fuels by co-processing mixtures of pyrolysis oil ( produced from biomass)[3,4] and crude oil fractions (obtained from distillation) in a standard oil refinery.
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