THE HYDROGENATION OF CATALYTICALLY UPGRADED BIOMASS PYROLYSIS OILS

摘要

Biomass pyrolysis oils can be produced by rapidly heating biomass materials such as wood, corn stover, or straw to 500°C for approximately 1 s and then cooling rapidly. The resulting liquids are combustible, but have many undesirable properties as fuels. Therefore, efforts are underway to upgrade these liquids to better fuels. One way of improving these oils is to catalytically upgrade them during the pyrolysis process to reduce the oxygen content and then hydrogenate the resulting liquids to further reduce the oxygen so that the final product consists mostly of hydrocarbons. This may be more cost-effective than hydrogenation of the raw pyrolysis oil because this approach may reduce the number of hydrotreating stages required and the hydrogen consumption. To test this approach, three simulated catalytically upgraded pyrolysis liquids were prepared based on microscale tests of catalytic pyrolysis and compared to a simulated raw pyrolysis oil.