In this study, Al-MCM-41 supported monometallic Ni, Co and Fe and bimetallic Pd-Co and Pd-Fe catalysts were prepared, characterized and evaluated for HDO of guaiacol at atmospheric press
INTRODUCTION
Back ground of study
Malaysia has tremendous biomass resources from agricultural sector such as oil palm, paddy, sugarcane and rubber trees [1, 2] Among them, biomass from oil palm plantation and mill has the main contribution, and this solid biomass is predicted to reach 85-110 million tons by 2020 [2] Nowadays, the biomass residues are utilized for steam and power generation at mills, fiber material, pellets and fertilizer [3, 4] However, a certain big portion of biomass residues is not fully utilized, raising waste treatment and environmental pollution issues [5, 6]
The lignocellulose biomass resource can be used not only as direct energy in combustion, but also as a more valuable fuel after conversion and upgrading process [7] Thermal conversion of biomass is one of the prominent technologies to produce bio-char, bio-oil and bio-gas [7] In comparison with torrefaction or gasification, pyrolysis is conducted at moderate temperature (400600 ºC) and in the absence of oxygen [8] The pyrolysis oil (bio-oil) product has significant advantages in storage, transport and ability to utilize as useful petrochemical and fuel [9] In Malaysia, pyrolysis oil can be produced from different biomass feedstock such as palm kernel shell (PKS) [10, 11], empty fruit bunch (EFB) [12, 13], rice husk [14, 15] and wood sawdust [16] Interestingly, BTG (the coordinator of the EMPYRO project) has already constructed a 2 t/h pyrolysis plan using EFB as the feedstock [17]
Bio-oil is considered a promising second-generation biofuel and has been used to generate heat and electricity, e.g in combustors or turbines or as a co-feed in heat and power production plants However, it is very difficult to directly utilize the pyrolysis
2 oil because of its higher water (1634 wt%) and oxygen contents (3257 wt%) than heavy fuel oil (0.1 wt% and