Catalytic Cracking of Palm Oil to Gasoline over Pretreated Cu-ZSM-5

The catalytic conversion of palm oil to gasoline using hydrogen pretreatment onh-zsm-5 with different copper loadings is discussed in this paper. the cu-zsm-5 catalysts were prepared using incipient wetness impregnation technique. the crystallinity, acidity and surface area were examined by x-ray diffraction (xrd), pyridine adsorption - infra red spectroscopy (py-ir), and nitrogen adsorption (na). the results revealed that the crystallinity, acidity, and surface area of catalyst decreased with increasing copper loading. the catalytic testing was carried out in a fixed bed reactor at atmospheric pressure with hydrogen flow rate of 1 l/h for an hour for hydrogen pretreatment on catalysts. then, the cracking process was continued at 500â°c and weight hourly space velocity (whsv) of 2.5 h–1 for four hours. loading copper on the zsm-5 catalyst showed adverse effects on catalytic activity. the highest gasoline component was aromatics, which was about 11.45 wt % (all consisted of alkyl benzene) followed by 10.53 wt% of naphthenes and 4.06 wt% of isoparaffins for 6 wt% cu-zsm-5. gas as side product consisted mainly of c3 compounds with 53.30 mol% followed by 29.84 mol% of c4 and 0.62 mol% of c5 compounds