ABSTRACT
In this study, cracking of Jatropha curcas non-edible oil to liquid biofuel products in a SS-316 (Stainless Steel) fixed bed reactor was carried out. Optimization of three parameters such as temperature, catalyst weight, and tetralin-to-oil ratio were investigated for maximizing the gasoline range hydrocarbon fraction with the help of Box-Behenken method. The ANOVA statistical analysis shows that the gas as well as liquid product yield follows the linear model with R2 value of 0.93 and 0.96, respectively. Moreover, for the gasoline range hydrocarbon fraction the quadratic model fits well with R2 value of 0.93. Temperature and catalyst weight were observed as significant parameters for both gas and liquid yield with p value less than 0.05. The effect of all three individual and quadratic terms of each parameters as well as interaction of temperature and catalyst weight were observed significant on the gasoline range hydrocarbons. Model variables investigated in this study were temperature (X1), amount of catalyst (X2) and tetralin oil ratio (X3). The optimum condition for obtaining gasoline range hydrocarbons was achieved at temperature of 425°C with 2g catalyst and without tetralin. The results revealed that BBD and response surface methodology could be used to get maximum data in a short duration with lesser number of experimental runs.
