Exploratory studies on fast pyrolysis oil upgrading

Pyrolysis oil is a dark brown liquid which can be produced in high yield from different kind of biomass sources by means of fast pyrolysis. Pyrolysis oil is considered as a promising second generation energy carrier and may play an important role in the future of "biobased economies". The energy content of pyrolysis oil is approximately half of fossil crude. Just like for crude oil, further reprocessing is necessary to arranged pyrolysis oil as fuel in e.g. combustion engines. This thesis describes the results of exploratory research of pyrolysis oil upgrading for biofuel production. For that purpose two promising options have been examined. The first route includes the treatment of pyrolysis oil with hydrogen at elevated temperatures and presses in the presence of metal catalysts. It appears that the properties of oil improved considerably by using solid catalysts based on ruthenium. Moreover a mild treatment using homogeneous metal catalysts also shows a promising option. The Second part of the research has an objective on improving pyrolysis oil properties by mixing with alcohol as a reagent. It appears that reactive distillation using butanol leads to a considerable improvement of important product properties such as viscosity, acid quality and energy contents