Support effects on hydrotreating of soybean oil over NiMo carbide catalyst

As an alternative to conventional sulfide catalysts, NiMo carbide catalysts were prepared by impregnation method and studied for the hydrotreating of soybean oil to produce hydrocarbons in the gasoline to diesel range. The effect of the catalyst supports on activity and selectivity was investigated by using three different types of materials: mesoporous material (Al-SBA-15), alumina (γ-Al2O3) and zeolites (ZSM-5, Zeolite β and USY). The structural characterization of the catalysts was performed using XRD, BET and TEM. Catalytic tests were carried out in a bench scale flow reactor at 400 °C and 650 psi. The results showed that the Al-SBA-15 supported catalyst has the highest surface area of 711.5 m2 g−1 and largest pore volume of 0.71 cm3 g−1. Among the five catalysts, hydrotreating on NiMoC/Al-SBA-15 gave the highest yield of organic liquid product (96%) and highest selectivity (97%) to hydrocarbons in the boiling range of the diesel fraction. For the three zeolite-supported catalysts, hydrotreating of soybean oil produced more hydrocarbon products in the boiling range of green gasoline (about 15–40%).