Pyrolysis of soybean oil with molten salt for bio-fuel

Pyrolysis of soybean oil was carried out in a ZnCl₂-KCl molten salt. The effects of feed rate, flow rate of carrier gas, pyrolysis temperature and input quantity were studied. And the compositions of the bio-oil were analyzed by GC-MS. The results show that the feed rate and carrier gas flow rate have great influences on the pyrolysis by changing the reaction residence time of soybean oil. When the feed rate is 1.2 g/min and without the carrier gas, the soybean oil can be fully cracked with the longer residence time. The gasification of the primary pyrolysis products is enhanced with the increasing of temperature, which leads to the yield, the content of oxygenated compounds and the acid value of bio-oil increase. With the increasing of input quantity, the yield of bio-oil is near 70% and keeps stable, but the decarboxylation effect decreases. The properties of bio-oil are improved and its component distribution is similar to the 0^# diesel after catalytic hydrogenation.