Optimization study on recovery hydrocarbons from pyrolysis oil using ionic liquid

Abstract

Energy crisis is a global issue because of fossil oil shortage. Biomass energy is a potential succedaneum for solving this problem, and fast pyrolysis is a effective route to convert biomass to liquid product. However the quality of pyrolysis oils is still a serious bottleneck for it service as transport fuel. Thus many study focused on how to improve it with physical or chemical methods. In this study, ionic liquid (1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride, [BMIm]Cl) was used to separate hydrocarbon and improve the content in simulated pyrolysis oils which consisted some typical components. The optimization procedure was based on the Back Propagation (BP) Artificial Neural Network (ANN) modeling with Genetic Algorithm (GA). It was found that the hydrocarbon yield and content was increasing when oils to [BMIm]Cl ratio decreased, and the extraction system can be reached to equillibrium in a short time. Optimal condition was set as which extraction and holding time were at 20 and 6 minutes and oils to [BMIm]Cl ratio at 1.2 : 1, and hydrocarbon yield and content were 61.41% and 80.21% respectively as result. Finally, [BMIm]Cl is recycled by water extraction from waste. Comparing with original [BMIm]Cl, the result shows that hydrocarbons upgrading performance using recycled [BMIm]Cl is still acceptable.