Catalytic pyrolysis of castor seed into liquid hydrocarbon transportation fuels

Abstract

Energy is essential for development and the demand for energy is increasing continuously due to the rapid outgrowth of population and urbanization. Biomass is found to be the maost promising source of many renewable enrgy sources. Pyrolysis is one of the most recent renewable energy processes, has been introduced and offers the advantages of a liquid product – bio-oil – that can be readily stored and transported, and used as a fuel, an energy carrier and a source of chemicals. Catalyst can increase the yield and quality of liquid product oil. In this paper, catalytic pyrolysis of castor seed was performed at 400oC for different ratio of catalyst to biomass using zeolite catalyst. It was found that max yield of liquid was obtained at 1:5 ratio. Overall maximum yield of 62.73% was obtained in case of zeolite at the ratio of 1:5. As compared to the yield of thermal pyrolysis of castor seed without catalyst which was 64.4%, the yield of oil was significantly reduced after catalysis for the catalyzed reaction. It was also observed that the bio-oil contains compounds with carbon chain length in the range of C4–C24 which is similar to most of fuels used.