AM-10-158 Turning Over a New Leaf in Renewable Diesel Hydrotreating

Description:

As a consequence of the concern over limited fossil fuel resources and global warming from CO2 emissions, the use of alternative, sustainable sources of energy for the transportation sec-tor has been increasing. This world-wide development is driven by increasing petroleum prices as well as government mandates and incentives. Despite this growth in renewable fluids, so far there has been little integration of renewable fluids into petroleum refineries. The two main bio-fuel products used in transportation fuels are bioethanol used in gasoline and FAME (Fatty Acid Methyl Ester) used in diesel. There are several compatibility issues with the properties of FAME and the specification of diesel, including a poor stability that causes filter plugging. This means that today only dedicated vehicles are using blends with 10% FAME biodiesel as a fuel. A pri-mary reason for the limits on blending is that FAME contains oxygen, and a process is needed that transforms renewable organic material into a pure hydrocarbon stream in order to use the biofuels in conventional automobile engines and distribute them using existing fuel infrastructure. One well-established method for this purpose is the conversion of vegetable oils into normal paraffins in the gasoline or diesel boiling range by employing a hydrotreating process, thereby producing what is known as renewable diesel or co-processed renewable diesel. In this process, the renewable organic material is reacted with hydrogen at elevated temperature and pressure in a catalytic reactor. The clear advantage of hydrotreating seed oils (or FAME) relative to the use of FAME biodiesel is the fact that the final products from this simple hydroprocessing process (simple paraffins) are the same components as those present in normal fossil diesel.