Biofuel Production from Catalytic Cracking of Triglyceride Materials Followed by an Esterification Reaction in a Scale-up Reactor

Thermochemical conversion of vegetable oils has become an attractive and alternative method for the production of high-grade biofuels. In the present work, thermal and catalytic cracking reactions were studied in a 60 L scale-up reactor using soybean oil and high acid value waste oil under the catalysis of a basic catalyst. A bio-oil yield of approximately 70% was obtained at a reaction temperature of 450 °C with a heating rate of 5 °C/min. After the thermal and catalytic cracking reactions, upgrading of bio-oils in a continuous pilot reactor was investigated. It was found that those undesired products (carboxylic acids) were changed into their corresponding fatty acid esters efficiently by a continuous esterification operation. The upgraded oils were further fractionated into gasoline and diesel fractions via distillation processing according to the requirements of the boiling range in the China specification for petroleum fuels. The results showed that the obtained biofuels have excellent cold-flow properties superior to those of conventional petroleum-based liquid fuels.