OBTENCIÓN DE COMBUSTIBLES RENOVABLES MEDIANTE HIDROTRATAMIENTO CATALÍTICO DE ACEITES VEGETALES Y GASÓLEO

Abstract

Catalytic hydrotreating of mixtures of vegetable oil (Jatropha curcas L.) with desulfurized diesel and straight run gas oil (SRGO) was carried out in this work. The feedstock was prepared in a volumetric ratio of 4:1 (hydrocarbon-to-vegetable oil) and it was characterized to determine its sulfur content, density and viscosity. A commercial trilobe CoMo/Al2O3 catalyst previously presulfided was used. The complete activation of the catalyst was carried out ex situ in a tubular reactor operating in continuous mode with a flow of sulfur-contaminated naphtha having 1 wt.% of sulfur. Hydrotreating reactions of the mixtures of vegetable oil and hydrocarbons were conducted into a batch reactor with a volume of 100 mL. The catalyst was added to the reactor in a concentration of 3 wt.% with respect to the liquid feedstock. When reaction finished, renewable diesel was recovered from the reactor and it was characterized for density, viscosity and sulfur content. In all cases, the hydrotreated product had better properties than the pure diesel and gas oil hydrotreated alone. It was considered that the addition of vegetable oil to the hydrocarbon had a synergistic effect. Kinetics of hydrodesulfurization of the diesel/vegetable oil and SRGO/vegetable oil feedstocks were obtained and it was found that the reaction order approach to n=1. The activation energy was slightly higher to the diesel/vegetable oil feedstock than SRGO/vegetable oil and the obtained correlation coefficients were acceptable.