Synthesis and Characterization of Molybdenum Incorporated Mesoporous Silica Catalyst for Catalytic Upgrading of Bio-fuels

摘要

Research for production of biofuels is very intense as we are about to run out of fossil fuels in another century. Bio-oils obtained from bio-mass through catalytic fast pyrolysis has high amounts of oxygen in the form of functional groups such as carbonyl compounds, phenolics and acids. Presence of oxygen in bio-oils makes it undesirable to use because of its low heating value, solubility problems with other hydrocarbons, high viscosity and poor thermal and chemical stability[1]. This undesired properties of bio-oil obtained from catalytic fast pyrolysis can be suppressed or completely eliminated by removing the oxygen through the process called hydrodeoxygenation. The catalysts reported in previous studies are transition metal phosphides and oxides, noble metals and zeolites[2]. The limitations of the catalyst studied were suffered from atleast one of the following disadvantages such as less cost-effective, poor hydrothermal stability, coke formation and ability to stay active in presence of coke, and easy recovery method of catalyst from the reaction mixture to name a few. We prepared molybdenum trioxide incorporated on mesoporous[3] silica with three dimensional pore structure (KIT-5)[4] by co-condensation with an aim to address above limitations.