The Deoxygenation of Jatropha Oil to High Quality Fuel via the Synergistic Catalytic Effect of Ni, W2C and WC Species

Abstract

Tungsten carbide-based materials have good deoxygenation activity in the conversion of biomass. In this paper, catalysts with different nickel–tungsten carbide species were prepared by tuning the reduction temperature and Ni loading, and the effects of these different tungsten carbide species in the conversion of jatropha oil were studied. XRD, XPS, TEM, HRTEM, Raman, H2-TPR, ICP-AES were used to characterize the catalysts. The results suggested that metallic W was gradually carburized to W2C species, and W2C species was further carburized to WC species with the increase in reduction temperature and Ni loading. The obtained 10Ni10W/AC-700 catalyst exhibited outstanding catalytic performance with 99.7% deoxygenation rate and 94.5% C15-18 selectivity, which were attributed to the smallest particle size, the best dispersion, the most exposed active sites, and the synergistic effect of Ni, W2C and WC species.