NOVEL NANOSTRUCTURED HYDROPROCESSING CATALYSTS

Abstract

In recent years, increasing green house gas emissions, declining availability of transportation fuels forced the researchers to develop the specialized catalyst to eliminate or at least reduce the pollutants in the chemical and refining processes and also developed immense interest in developing renewable future fuels. In this regard, choice of the use of biofuel instated of traditional fuels seems to be very promising since they produce lower carbon emissions as compared to fossil fuels. This thesis describes the detailed synthesis characterization and evaluation of hierarchical mesoporous ZSM 5 and mesoporous titania based hydroprocessing catalyst for hydroconversion of jatropha oil into biofuels. newline This thesis describes the synthesis of hierarchical mesoporous ZSM 5 using kaolin clay as silica and alumina source. The physicochemical properties of synthesized ZSM 5 have been optimized by varying synthesis parameters like metakaolinization temperature and micropore to mesopore template ratio and it is found that lower ratio of templates used for micropores to mesopores and higher metakaolinization temperature are favorable conditions in enhancing the physicochemical properties of ZSM 5. It is found that jatropha oil could be converted into liquid hydrocarbons over sulfided Ni MoH ZSM 5 clay derived catalyst, with high yield 93 percent of diesel range hydrocarbons and kerosene range hydrocarbons 37.4 percent at optimized conditions. newline This thesis describes the synthesis characterization and evaluation of NiMoS catalyst supported on organosilane templated mesoporous titania for hydrotreatment of jatropha oil under typical hydroprocessing conditions. It is found that this catalyst system is very promising for the production of green diesel range hydrocarbons. This study shows that renewable diesel range hydrocarbons with more than 95 percent yield could be achieved by tuning the reaction conditions. The catalytic performance of this catalyst was also compared with the other catalysts. newline newline