Abstract:
This research focused on studying the liquefaction of Giant leucaena wood for producing liquid fuel or oil product using fuel oil and/or water as solvents. Experiments were conducted in a 500-ml autoclave reactor with an initial N2 pressure of 10 bar. The influences of temperatures (300 and 350 oC), retention times (30, 60, 90 minutes), fuel oil content in mixed solvent (0, 16.7, 33.3, 50 and 100 wt.%) and stirrer speed (200, 300 and 400 rpm) were investigate. The obtained oil product (bio-oil/ fuel oil mixture) was analyzed by CHN analyzer and gas chromatography with mass spectrometry. The %bio-oil yield was calculated by deducting initial amount fuel oil from total weight of liquid product. Using pure fuel oil at a higher temperature of 350 oC gave higher bio-oil yield (12.07 wt.%) than that at a temperature of 300 oC (6.40 wt.%). Bio-oil yield increased with increasing retention time from 30 to 60 minutes but decreased when the time is too long, i.e. 90 minutes. In case of stirrer speed, the bio-oil yield increased with increasing stirrer speed from 200 to 400 rpm. In case of mixed solvent, the bio-oil yield increased with fuel oil content and reached the maximum value of 20.70 wt.% at the fuel oil content in solvent of 50%. This indicated a synergetic effect that would be attributable to the inhibition of secondary reaction in the co-solvent system. The oil product obtained from using mixed solvent had high heating value of about 36-40 MJ/kg and contained mostly aliphatic, aromatic, and alcohol compounds.