Investigation of Fuel Components Produced by the Isomerization of Bio-Paraffin Mixtures

Abstract

The importance of biofuels becomes more acute, especially in the European Union. Beside them, the biogasoil is a promising product that is a fuel with high isoparaffin content in the gas oil boiling range, which can be produced by the catalytic hydrogenation of different natural triglycerides. In order to improve the cold flow properties of mixtures consist of mainly normal paraffins they have to be isomerized. In this paper the isomerization of paraffin mixture consists of only normal and iso-paraffin was studied on 0.5% Pt/SAPO-11 catalyst at 300–380 °C temperature, 40 bar pressure, 0.5–4.0 h-1 of liquid space velocity and 400 Nm3/m3 of H2/feed ratio. It was found that CFPP value of the products can be tailored between -7 °C and -15 °C at a gas oil yield of 85–95%. During the conversion 2–5% of bio-jet fuel was obtained with CFPP value of between -55 °C and -45 °C. Bio-naphtha also formed with a yield of 2–5.5%, which can be used as a feedstock of naphtha isomerization. All of the products are free of aromatics, sulphur and nitrogen content, so they are environmentally sound blending component.