Influence of the solid catalyst porosity on the products yields and composition from peanut shells pyrolysis

FERMANELLI, CARLA SOLEDAD; SAUX, CLARA; DIGUILIO, ELIANA; PIERELLA, LILIANA BEATRIZ

Stuttgart

Congreso; 2nd International Bioeconomy Congress; 2017

University of Hohenheim

Argentine is the first worldwide peanut (Arachys hypogaea) exporter, with around 600,000 tonsper year of commercialization. Nevertheless, peanut production leaves around 25-vol% ofshells as residue of the process. This low density waste (0.10 kg/dm3) is actually burned orburied, causing serious environmental problems, or stored in silos but with an important autoignition risk.As an alternative to solve this issue and to obtain interesting chemical products, a catalyticpyrolysis process is proposed. In this sense, two types of porous solid materials were studied: atraditional microporous ZSM-11 zeolite (H-ZSM-11 micro) and a hierarchical form of the sameclass of MEL zeolite (H-ZSM-11 micro/meso).The pyrolysis reaction generates a liquid fraction (bio-oil), a solid one (bio-char), and gases.The bio-oil is a high energy density liquid fuel, which could be used as substitute of fuel-oil [1].However, high oxygen compounds concentration is obtained from the thermal process makingthis product of reduced stability and poor heating value. We propose the use of the abovementioned zeolites as catalysts for the in situ cracking reactions for the deoxygenation of thecomponents and to obtain high value chemical products.