Co-Processing of Oil and Bio-Oil in the Medium of Supercritical Solvent Mixture

Abstract

Nowadays, the production of liquid motor fuel faces such problems as compliance of the final product with existing international standards (for the content of sulfur, oxygen and nitrogen) as well as the improvement of the feasibility of the existing technologies for fuel production. Biomass is one of the most perspective and widely spread sources for energy. The existing techniques for biomass conversion into the fuels are mainly based on the hydroprocessing and can be successfully applied in petroleum industry. The integrated processes involving both biofuel and oil conversion are of great interest. In this work, the novel hydrogen-free approach for co-processing of heavy oil fractions and bio-oil is described. The use of supercritical solvent mixture, which includes propanol-2 and n-hexane, allows full substrate conversion to be achieved for maximum 3 h. As a result, the hydrocarbon mixture consisting of aromatic and cyclic compounds was obtained with 99 wt. % yield.