Chemical-switching strategy for the production of green biofuel on NiCo/MCM-41 catalysts by tuning atmosphere

NiCo bimetallic catalyst was one of potential candidates used toward the hydrodeoxygenation of vegetable oils. However, there is still lack for digging out the relationship between micro-structure pretreated by various atmosphere and its catalytic performance. To hunting the relationship, NiCo/MCM-41 precursor was synthesized via the conventional co-impregnation method, and further pretreated by different atmospheres, including NH3, CH4/H2 and H2 in order to tune the particle size, active component dispersion, and acid properties of the catalysts. NiCo/MCM-41-H pretreated by H2 exhibits superior catalytic performance (65.8 wt% biofuel yield and 98.2% C12-C18 alkanes selectivity) on converting jatropha oil than that by NH3 and by CH4/H2. For comparison, the NiCo/MCM-41-H shows the smallest NiCo alloy grains, the smallest amount of strong acid, the lowest Bronsted acid/Lewis acid ratio, and the most uniform dispersion of Ni and Co. All the distinct surface properties of NiCo/MCM-41-H reasonably account for high efficiency in hydrodeoxygenation of jatropha oil. The work reveals the relationship between NiCo bimetallic catalyst structure and its hydrodeoxygenation performance, and provides a robust pretreatment method for tuning the surface properties to improve its catalytic performance for converting biomass oils into green biofuel.

Automated summary

In this study, the relationship between the micro-structure of NiCo bimetallic catalyst and its catalytic performance was explored. The catalyst pretreated by H2 exhibited superior performance in the hydrodeoxygenation of jatropha oil compared to catalysts pretreated by NH3 and CH4/H2.