Preparation of Palm Fatty Acid Distillate (PFAD) As Raw Material for Bio Aviation Fuel Production

Abstract

Nowadays, aviation sector became one of the most important transportation in the world. The demand in this sector has increased rapidly over the last 10 years. Unfortunately, the increase of the demand leads to an increase of fuel consumption and CO2 emission in the aviation’s sector. Bio-based aviation fuel is believed to be one of the solution for the reduction of CO2 emission in the aviation’s sector. Palm Fatty Acid Distillate (PFAD) which is a by product of palm oil refinery, contains a high amount of free fatty acids. The free fatty acids contained in the PFAD are able to be converted into straight hydrocarbon chain through decarboxylation process. This thesis conducted 3 different experiments to find out the best decarboxylation reaction’s condition to convert the FFA into straight chain hydrocarbons over an activated carbon catalyst. The experiments compared the results between the experiment with different reaction’s conditions and the presence of solvent in the reaction. The results have shown that the third experiment, which used heptane as solvent and hydrogen in argon gas as reaction’s environment, has the best reaction’s condition among others. Experiment 3 has converted 77.07% of the FFA, while experiment 2 and 1 only converted 58.37% and 16.30% respectively.