Hydrocracking of Jatropha oil to aromatic compounds over the LaNiMo/ZSM-5 catalyst

The conversion of biomass to produce high-valued chemical aromatic intermediates such as benzene (B), toluene (T), ethylbenzene (E), xylene (X), naphthalene (N) has attached booming interests. Herein, in order to obtain BTEXN aromatics on the hydrocracking of Jatropha oil, several LaNiMo/ZSM-5 catalysts (La loading from 0.5 to 15 wt%) by alkali treatment and metal impregnation methods were synthesized and investigated. Fundamentally, we found the alkali treatment engendered more mesoporosity to ZSM-5 and resulted in higher catalytic activity . It bears emphasis that further metal impregnated catalyst NiMo/ZSM-5 could improve the aromatics yield due to the increase of metal active sites and acidity sites. Besides, we noted that La loading had positive effects on coke reduction, catalytic stability and catalyst lifetime. To sum up, results confirmed the favorable 1 wt% La–NiMo/ZSM-5 had maximum 75 wt% BTEXN yield, longer catalyst lifetime for 100 h and decreased carbon deposits by 1.11%.