Thermal and Catalytic Pyrolysis Process of Neem Seed to Produce Valuable Fuels over RFCC Catalyst: Process Development and Evaluation

In this research, thermal and catalytic pyrolysis of neem seed as a non-edible feed has been investigated for the production of valuable chemicals including bio-oil, bio-char and bio-gas. The sensitivity analysis of main operating parameters of thermal pyrolysis process including temperature (350-550 degrees C), reaction time (30-180 min) and heating rate (10-40 degrees C/min) on the major products yield has been performed and the optimum operating condition to maximize the bio-oil production has been determined. The achieved results indicated that the maximum bio-oil production yield is obtained at temperature of 450 degrees C. The bio-oil production yield enhances with increasing the heating rate, whereas the process time in the considered range has not significant effect on the bio-oil production yield. Since the main focus of this study was catalytic upgrading of pyrolysis-derived bio-oil to valuable fuels, catalytic pyrolysis of neem seeds over industrial RFCC catalyst has been examined using different catalyst loading in the range of 10-40 wt %. It is inferred that more aromatic compounds will be generated with increasing the RFCC catalyst loading which could be attributed to the presence of Al2O3 and zeolite in the catalyst structure. Also, the bio-oil and bio-gas production yields via catalytic pyrolysis process over 20 wt. % RFCC catalyst enhanced from 44.3 % to 49.5 % and 22.4 % to 27 % with increasing temperature from 350 and 450 degrees C, respectively.