Investigation of palm fibre pyrolysis over acidic catalyst for bio-fuel production

This research aimed to evaluate the pyrolysis reaction for bio-fuel production from palm fibre. A preliminary step to investigate the effect of different type of heterogeneous catalyst revealed three different catalysts: zeolite type (H-Beta), tungsten-zirconia (WO3/ZrO2) and modified alumina (KOH/Al3O2). An increase in temperature was found to have a positive impact on the production of bio-fuel. Bio-fuel synthesis performed in a stainless steel tubular reactor was found to optimized at 650 degrees C using WO3/ZrO2 as a catalyst resulting in 40.5% bio-fuel, 7.1% bio-char and 14.3% gas. Formation of gas product is due to the presence of strong acid sites on the surface of WO3/ZrO2 promoting cracking reactions. H-Beta catalyst produced the largest about of bio-char which is also due to strong acid sites and narrow catalytic pore structure which caused rapid deposit of coke and then formation of bio-char. Pyrolysis of palm fibre over KOH/Al2O3 catalyst produced the least amount of bio-fuel, but contain the largest composition of phenolic compounds. These compounds are the transformed from lignin content in palm fibre on alkaline sites of the KOH/Al2O3 catalyst. A larger scale production facility was designed to produce larger amount of bio-fuel for the engine performance test. The biofuel blended gasoline (10% biofuel) was tested in an eight-cylinder spark-ignition engine. Engine performance testing revealed that the brake power and torque generated from combustion of biofuel blended oil was lower than conventional gasoline. The brake specific fuel consumption of bio-fuel blended was slightly higher than conventional gasoline. (C) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.