(625s) BIO-OIL Characterization through Distillation Curves

In recent years, many efforts are currently been made to obtain alternative fuels aiming to complement the traditional fuels originated from crude oil. In this vein, biomass, those renewable resource derived organic matter of animal or vegetable origin can be transformed into energy by cracking. The cracking is the thermal decomposition of biomass without the presence of oxygen in liquid, solid and gaseous products. The liquid product of most interest, it is called bio-oil or pyrolytic oil, and it is a complex mixture composed of various chemical compounds and therefore difficult to characterize. The characterization of the bio-oil is very important for process simulation, scale-up and processing. Since the bio-oil is composed of hydrocarbon similar to crude oil, this study aimed to characterize the bio-oil by distillation curves for the use of correlations that estimate physical and chemical properties of crude oil, whereas there is no correlations for the bio-oil. These correlations estimate properties such as molecular weight, viscosity, refractive index and composition of oil fractions. The correlations employed measurable properties as input data, such as density and boiling point. Boiling points obtained from the distillation curve, providing a wide range of information concerning complex mixtures. Distillations were performed on a sample of crude oil and three sample of bio-oil by an adaptation of ASTM D86 (atmospheric distillation) and ASTM D1160 (vacuum distillation). Some of the estimated properties corroborated by experimental data, and the estimated properties showed little deviation from the experimental and correlations it can be improved with a larger set of data. Experimental tests carried out to determine the acid value and iodine value, for which there are no correlations. The samples of bio-oil showed a high acidity, between 132 and 143 mg KOH / g, unlike oil, which showed an acid value of 0.34 mg KOH / g.