ABSTRACT
From limitations mentioned above, Hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) process have been discussed and studied to convert vegetable oils or methyl ester components to liquid alkane hydrocarbons and this fuel can be called 2nd generation biofuel or Bio Hydrogenated Diesel (BHD). HDO of methyl ester compounds into alkane hydrocarbon have been reported, such as, methyl heptanoate (Ryymin et al. 2010), ethyl stearate (Kubičková et al. 2005, Snåre et al. 2007), methyl stearate (Do et al. 2009), methyl laurate (Chen et al. 2014, Shi et al. 2014) and methyl hexanoate or methyl palmitate (Shi et al. 2012, Zuo et al. 2012). In order to increase the blending ratio of biodiesel
1 INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, renewable biomass-based resources are considered to be a new challenge in the development of renewable energy due to environmental concerns. The first generation of biofuel or biodiesel has been produced commercially by transesterification reaction between vegetable oil, animal fat or wasted cooking oil with methanol to produce fatty acid methyl ester, FAME. However, FAME which mainly consists of c = c bonds and oxygen atoms exhibit undesirable fuel properties, such as, low cloud point, low calorific value, low oxidation stability and limited blending with liquid diesel from fossil (Zuo et al. 2012). In the case of Thailand, the limitation of blending FAME with diesel for transportation use is 7% by volume (2013). In order to improve properties of biodiesel, catalytic partial and full hydrogenation process of polyunsaturated methyl ester into their monounsaturated compound can be introduced. There have been reports of full hydrogenation of vegetable oils including hydrogenation of linseed,
or FAME with conventional diesel fuel from petroleum, it can be converted to alkane hydrocarbons via HDO process to removed oxygenated compounds from methyl ester. Nevertheless, there are limited studies on the techno-economic assessment of BHD production from FAME via HDO process.
