Construction of Layered Ni/SAPO-11 Catalysts to Promote Lipid Hydrodeoxygenation

To meet aviation decarbonization targets, efficient catalysts for bio-jet fuel are needed. Hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) is an indispensable step in converting lipid feedstocks to jet-range hydrocarbons, which critically depends on the pore architecture, acidity distribution and metal dispersion of the catalysts. In this work, a layered SAPO-11 (LS) molecular sieve was synthesized using the polyamine surfactant (C 22 H 45 -N(CH 3 )-C 6 H 12 -N(CH 3 ) 2 ) as a micro-mesopore-directing agent. Ni species were introduced to obtain a series of Ni x /LS catalysts with the Ni loadings of x wt% ( x  = 3.0, 6.0, and 9.0), in which Ni 6 /LS exhibited the best HDO performance. Using methyl laurate (ML) as a model feedstock, at the optimized conditions of 360 °C, 2.0 MPa and a weight hourly space velocity (WHSV) of 6.0 h − 1 , the Ni 6 /LS catalyst had the 99.6% conversion of ML with the 97.3% selectivity toward C 11 -C 12 alkanes, surpassing the conventional Ni 6 /microporous SAPO-11 (Ni 6 /MS) catalyst and the literature-reported catalysts. The superior lipid HDO performance of Ni 6 /LS was attributed that the layered architecture of LS provided a larger specific surface area and more mesoporous channels than MS, greatly promoting the high dispersion of Ni species. Graphical