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Ryan Loe will be presenting his exit seminar, Heterogeneous Catalytic deoxygenation of lipids to fuel-like hydrocarbons over improved bimetallic nickel catalysts.

Abstract: Diminishing petroleum reserves and environmental considerations have strengthened the demand for developing renewable fuel technologies. One alternative is deoxygenating plant oils, animal fats, and waste lipid streams to fuel-like hydrocarbons. These fuels offer a drop-in replacement to petroleum products while potentially becoming carbon neutral, satisfying both fuel and environmental concerns. These products can be obtained through catalytic deoxygenation via either hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) or decarboxylation/decarbonylation (deCOx). HDO requires problematic sulfided catalyst and extreme hydrogen pressures to convert lipids to fuel-like hydrocarbons. Therefore, this work focuses on the deCOx pathway because of the significant decrease in hydrogen requirements as well as the simple supported metal catalysts that can be employed. Generally, a number of authors use Pd or Pt as the active metals for deCOx; however, their cost can be industrially prohibitive. Recently, inexpensive Ni catalysts have shown comparable catalytic deCOx activity to Pd and Pt, albeit significant catalyst deactivation and catalytic cracking to undesirable products remain problematic. Therefore, this work aims to improve the activity, selectivity, and recyclability of supported Ni catalysts for the deCOx of lipids. Cu, Sn, and minimal amount of Pt were investigated as secondary promoter metals on 20 wt% Ni/γ-Al2O3 catalysts for the deoxygenation of model lipid compounds with mixed success. The most promising Ni-Cu catalyst developed was employed in an industrially relevant fixed bed reactor for the deoxygenation of realistic triglyceride feeds, hemp oil and yellow grease, as well as fatty acid feeds, brown grease.

Faculty advisor: Dr. Mark Crocker