Influence of surface acidity/basicity of selected metal oxide catalysts and reaction atmospheres on the ketonisation of propionic acid to produce 3-pentanone as a liquid biofuel precursor

Abarasi Hart, Himanshu Patel, Eyup Yildirir and Jude A. Onwudili

Renewable Energy, 2025, vol. 250, issue C

Abstract: Defossilisation of the transportation sector can be achieved via the conversion of renewable biomass into drop-in liquid hydrocarbon-rich fuels. Bio-oils from the pyrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass contain significant proportion of carboxylic acids, which can be upgraded to liquid fuel range precursors via C-C coupling e.g., ketonisation. In this present study, ZrO2, SiO2, and SiO2–ZrO2 were synthesised and used for the ketonisation of propionic acid to 3-pentanone, in a stirred 100 mL batch reactor between 300 ᵒC and 400 ᵒC under 10 bar initial pressure of nitrogen or hydrogen. The order of ketonisation activity by the catalysts was: ZrO2 > SiO2–ZrO2 > SiO2 under both nitrogen and hydrogen atmospheres, based on their different surface acidity/basicity properties. Under nitrogen, ZrO2 catalyst showed high activity and selectivity towards 3-pentanone with the highest yield of 70.3 % at 350 ᵒC. Interestingly, the catalyst gave 12.2 % higher yield of 3-pentanone under hydrogen than nitrogen. This indicated positive influence of hydrogen towards the ketonisation reaction, possibly by preventing formation of intermediates and thus enhancing catalyst stability. Preliminary tests involving mixtures of propionic acid, and a bio-oil sample shows that ZrO2 was still selective toward ketonisation in the presence of other classes of compounds in bio-oils.

Keywords: Biomass; Pyrolysis bio-oils; Propionic acid; Ketonisation; C-C coupling; Sustainable liquid hydrocarbon fuels (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148125010481
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:250:y:2025:i:c:s0960148125010481

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2025.123386

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().