Boreskov Institute of Catalysis SB RAS, Novosibirsk, Russia

OP-1-5DEOXYGENATION OF TALL OIL FATTY ACIDS TO BIOFUELPäivi Mäki-Arvela 1 , Bartosz Rozmysłowicz 1 , Siswati Lestari 1 ,Olga Simakova 1,2 , Tapio Salmi 1 , Dmitry Yu. Murzin 11 Åbo Akademi University, Process Chemistry Centre, FI-20500 Turku, Finland,pmakiarv@abo.fi2 Boreskov Institute of Catalysis SB RAS, Novosibirsk, RussiaCrude tall oil (CTO), which is a side product from pulp industry, is produced inrelatively large quantities, e.g. in year 2004 the tall oil production only in UnitedStates was 845 thousand tons. CTO, which contains about 45% free fatty acids,undergoes distillation leading to so-called TOFA (Tall oil fatty acids). The latter couldserve as a feedstock for diesel-like fuel containing long-chained hydrocarbons.Catalytic deoxygenation of fatty acids and their derivatives was demonstrated tooccur at 300 – 350°C in the liquid phase using Pd/C or Pt/C as catalysts in a batchand a semibatch reactors. The aim of this work was to test applicability TOFA as afeedstock in catalytic deoxygenation. This reaction with the initial concentration of0.15 – 0.6 mol/l in dodecane was performed in a semibatch reactor in a temperaturerange of 300 - 350°C under 17 bar of 1% H 2 in argon or in pure hydrogen. Theprimary products were C18 fatty acid300.15 mol/l of TOFA0.3 mol/l of TOFA250.6 mol/l of TOFAisomers and oleic acid, which werehydrogenated further to stearic acid.20Thereafter, stearic acid was1510500 120 240 360 480 600deoxygenated to the desired product, n-heptadecane (Fig. 1). The conversion offatty acids to hydrocarbons increasedwhen decreasing the initial concentrationTime (min)Fig. 1. Formation of n-heptadecane usingdifferent initial concentrations of TOFA atof TOFA as well as by decreasing thereaction temperature, which means that300°C using m cat. = 0.5 g and V L = 100 ml, higher temperatures and initialrespectively. Solvent dodecane.concentration promote side reactionsstronger side reactions than deoxygenation per se. In the final work the effect ofdifferent parameters on reaction kinetics will be discussed.mol % of C17 aliphatic hydrocarbons28