Plasma-Assisted Catalytic Cracking as an Advanced Process for Vegetable Oils Conversion to Biofuels: A Mini Review
Teguh Riyanto, I. Istadi,* Luqman Buchori, Didi D. Anggoro, and Asep Bayu Dani Nandiyanto
Cite This:Ind. Eng. Chem. Res.2020, 59, 17632−17652 Read Online
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Metrics & More Article RecommendationsABSTRACT: As energy demands increase and fossil fuels resources decrease, a renewable energy must be developed to supply energy demand. Biofuels from vegetable oils has great potential to help supply that energy demand, since biofuels is renewable energy. Biofuels from vegetable oils can be produced through the cracking process of vegetable oils. In this paper, a comprehensive mini review on cracking processes using advanced technologies, especially plasma-assisted catalytic cracking, was reported. The catalytic cracking is the most developed process,because of high selectivity in biofuels production, by introducing base and/or acid catalysts. The latest advanced cracking process technology is plasma-assisted catalytic cracking in addition to microwave-assisted cracking process. Plasma discharge has an important role in assisting electron excitation in
the covalent bond of reactant molecules, i.e., breaking C−C, CC, etc., so that the cracking process can be conducted easily. Several plasma reactor designs have been proposed by previous researchers; however, the dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma reactor is the most preferred design. Several process parameters that affected the DBD plasma reactor performance, such as discharge gap, feedflow rate, applied voltage, presence of catalysts, and reactor temperature, were addressed. Even though the plasma-assisted catalytic cracking show high potential alternative technology in vegetable oil conversion to biofuels, several drawbacks, which are addressed in this paper, must be considered in the cracking process. Therefore, this mini review is expected to bring the researcher’s mindset to innovate the cracking process to be efficient as possible.
1. INTRODUCTION
Energy demand is increasing, along with the increase in human population. As human mobilization increases, energy becomes very important to cover the daily needs. Nowadays, most of the energy demands are supplied by resources based on fossil fuels.
However, fossil fuels are nonrenewable fuels, so that their availability and sustainability in the environmentally nature will be exhausted. On the other hand, the fossil fuels reserves are going to decline as fuel exploitation to supply energy demand increases. Furthermore, fossil fuels are not environmentally friendly, because of the high pollution produced from the fossil fuels. Fossil fuels contain many contaminants, such as heavy metals, sulfur, nitrogen, and others. The combustion of those contaminants can produce harmful compounds that can pollute the environment and harm animals and humans. As an example, the sulfur in fossil fuels can generate SOx compounds that can generate acid rain. Therefore, new promising renewable energy resources must be developed to supply the environmentally benign energy demand.
Biofuels have great potential as an energy resource to support energy demand. Biofuels is a renewable fuel that can be produced from the conversion of biomass through a
chemical process. Biofuels has almost the same composition as petroleum in the form of short-chain and long-chain hydrocarbons that can be fractionated into various types of derived fuels, such as gasoline, kerosene, diesel, and other long- chain hydrocarbons.1 Some of the advantages of biofuels are that they are easy to adapt with other fuels and they are environmentally friendly; also, no contaminant compounds are present.2,3 Another advantage from the use of biofuels is the combustion process, which produces more environmentally friendly emissions, compared to fossil fuels,4since biofuels do not contain any dangerous pollutant compounds, such as sulfur and nitrogen.3Biofuels, as an alternative fuel, can be obtained from various vegetable oils. Vegetable oil contains triglycerides consisting of fatty acid groups with long-chain hydrocarbons
Received: July 1, 2020 Revised: August 31, 2020 Accepted: September 1, 2020 Published: September 1, 2020
Review pubs.acs.org/IECR
© 2020 American Chemical Society 17632
https://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.iecr.0c03253 Ind. Eng. Chem. Res.2020, 59, 17632−17652
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