Emulsification of Bio-Oil and Diesel

Abstract

With a rich biomass resource from palm oil industry, Malaysia has high potential in developing the biofuel industry. Fast pyrolysis of biomass provides bio-oil, which has a wide range of projected applications that are comparable to that of the crude oil. Storage and processing of lignocellulosic bio-oil are not economically successful yet. Bio-oil has to undergo further downstream processing to attain right specifications for final applications. Emulsification of bio-oil with conventional fuel such as diesel is one of the direct applications projected for bio-oil. Since bio-oil is a complex mixture of polar and non-polar compounds, blending of bio-oil and diesel is a challenge. Fast pyrolysis of palm kernel shells (PKS) at 550 °C in a fixed bed reactor yielded39.2 ± 5.0 wt% of bio-oil. The bio-oil was investigated for its properties and taken for emulsification studies. The impact of emulsification parameters on the combustion properties of bio-oil diesel emulsified mixture wasperformed by varying bio-oil, diesel, and surfactant ratios. With the aid of an optimisation tool, the emulsion samples achieved an optimised pH of 3.29, heating value of 42.19 MJ/kg and density of 0.86 g/cm3.