Production of renewable liquid fuel from triglycerides

 Triglyceride is a kind of renewable sources and widely exists in animals and plants. The cracking properties of triglyceride were analyzed through TG, DTG and DSC using soybean oil as material. The catalysis mechanism was changed with base catalyst. The results show that the fuel properties of cracking product are improved because the base catalyst can promote decarboxylation reaction in cracking process. The temperature of cracking of soybean oil is about 400℃~500℃. The suitable cracking technology is flash pyrolysis in a trickle bed reactor. Several kinds of catalysts such as Al₂O₃, MCM-41 and Na₂CO₃ were compared. Under the optimum conditions, the obtained cracking oil shows low acid value (30mg KOH/g). The cracking oil characterized by FTIR and GC-MS shows the formation of olefins, paraffins. The heat value of pyrolytic oil is 43MJ/kg and its dynamic viscosity and density is 2.6mm²/s and 0.84g/cm³, respectively.