A Novelty Catalytic Deoxygenation Process of Pine Sawdust for Rich Single-Ring Aromatic Bio-Oil

Abstract

Biomass as an inexhaustible source of clean energy could be transformed into high-quality fuel by thermal chemical technologies. However, rare literature on the novelty biomass pre-deconstruction activation catalytic deoxygenation (PACD) was reported. In this work, without other impurities, the pine sawdust (PS) char as an in-situ catalyst was used to catalytic deoxygenation of its deconstruction volatiles to achieve rich single-ring aromatic bio-oil. This study evaluated the influence of the PS char on the characteristics of three-phase products obtained from the PACD process. And, the special phenomenon of decrease or increase in char catalyst yield was analyzed in depth. After the process of pyrolysis (PP), isothermal catalytic deoxygenation (ICD), and the PACD process, the quality of three-phase productions was effectively improved in the PACD. The pre-deconstruction activation phase improved the H2/CO ratio to 1.00 in the whole PACD. After the PACD, the single-ring aromatics in oil had reached 49.72%. And, the O concentration in oil and water yield dropped obviously. Following in-situ catalytic deoxygenation of PS char, the generation of carbon deposit led to a significant elevation in C content, which caused the PS char to tend to graphite.

Keywords: biomass, char, pre-deconstruction, in-situ activation, catalytic deoxygenation.