Biofuels of Green Diesel-Kerosene-Gasoline Production from Palm Oil: Effect of Palladium Cooperated with Second Metal on Hydrocracking Reaction

In this work, two kinds of catalyst called monometallic Palladium (Pd) and a bimetallic of Pd-Iron (Fe) were synthesised using aluminum oxide (Al2O3) as the supported material via the wet impregnate method. A monometallic catalyst (0.5% Pd/Al2O3) named Pd cat was used as control. For the bimetallic catalyst, ratios of Pd to Fe were varied, and included 0.38% Pd-0.12% Fe (PF1), 0.25% Pd-0.25% Fe (PF2), and 0.12% Pd-0.38% Fe (PF3). The catalysts were characterised to investigate physical properties such as the surface area, pore size, porosity, and pore size distribution including their composition by Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), and X-Ray Diffraction (XRD). Subsequently, all catalysts were applied for biofuels production in terms of green diesel/kerosene/gasoline from palm oil via a hydrocracking reaction. The results showed that the loading of Fe to Pd/Al2O3 could improve the active surface area, porosity, and pore diameter. Considering the catalytic efficiency for the hydrocracking reaction, the highest crude biofuel yield (94.00%) was obtained in the presence of PF3 catalyst, while Pd cat provided the highest refined biofuel yield (86.00%). The largest proportion of biofuel production was green diesel (50.00-62.02%) followed by green kerosene (31.71-43.02%) and green gasoline (6.10-8.11%), respectively. It was clearly shown that the Pd-Fe bimetallic and Pd monometallic catalysts showed potential for use as chemical catalysts in hydrocracking reactions for biofuel production.