In-situ Catalytic Upgrading of Pyrolysis Vapours from Sugarcane Bagasse over Newly-developed Ni-Ce/HZSM-5 catalyst: Effect of Catalyst to Biomass Mass Ratio

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to investigate the influence of catalyst to biomass ratio (by mass %) on the in-situ catalytic upgrading of oxygenated pyrolysis vapours over the newly-developed Nickel-Cerium/HZSM-5 catalyst via in-situ fixed bed reactor. The pyrolysis temperature was kept at 500 °C for all investigated samples. The HZSM-5 (94 wt%) was used as a support, while nickel (3 wt%) and cerium (3 wt%) was impregnated as promoters via incipient wetness impregnation method. The sugarcane bagasse as feedstock was fixed at 2 g, while the catalyst mass loading was loaded and varied in fixed bed reactor based on the catalyst to biomass mass ratio (C:B) as follows 0.5:1.0 (CB1), 1.0:1.0 (CB2), 1.5:1.0 (CB3), 2.0:1.0 (CB4), 2.5:1.0 (CB5), and 3.0:1.0 (CB6). For comparison, the non-catalytic pyrolysis of biomass was employed and labelled as CB0 (0.0:1.0). The results show that the presences of catalyst significantly affect the pyrolysis oil yield than the non-catalytic sample, in which gradually increased from 48.5 wt% to 60.5 wt% with increasing catalyst mass loading from CB1 (0.5:1.0) to CB6 (3.0:1.0). Consequently, the coke yield is also increased from 10.0 wt% to 12.0 wt% from CB1 (0.5:1.0) to CB6 (3.0:1.0). The increase in Ni-Ce/HZSM-5 catalyst mass loading has an additional effect with respect to C6 – C8 hydrocarbon contents in pyrolysis oil. Among the tested catalyst to biomass ratio, the CB2 (1.0:1.0) sample has demonstrated to be potential candidates in the enhancement of C6-C8 hydrocarbons in pyrolysis oil with the highest yield of 8.82 %.