Producing monoaromatic compounds from pyrolytic vapour of rice straw using H-ZSM-5/B₂O₃ catalyst

Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Indonesia, Kampus Baru UI, Depok 16424, West Jawa, Indonesia

^* Coresponding author: setiadi@che.ui.ac.id

Abstract

The catalytic conversion of rice straw was done to produce mono aromatic compounds. The mixed catalyst of ZSM-5 and B₂O₃ was obtained through calcination of ZSM-5 and H₃BO catalyst mixture. The variation of the composition of the ZSM-5 and B2O3 catalyst was applied in order to test the effect of catalyst composition to the production of mono aromatics compounds. The composition of catalyst used were 15% ZSM-5, 30% ZSM-5, and 100% ZSM-5. Other than the variation of catalyst composition, the variation of the operating temperature of the catalytic conversion also performed in order to study the effect of the temperature to the production of mono aromatic compounds. The catalytic conversion was done at 450, 475, and 500 oC. Experimental results show that the addition of the catalyst resulted in the conversion of oxygenate compounds resulted from the pyrolytic process of rice straw into mono aromatic compounds. It also shows that using 100% ZSM-5 produced the highest yield of mono aromatics compounds. The amount of mono aromatic compounds produced will decrease, as the fraction of ZSM-5 catalyst used and operation temperature also decreased. Using the 100% ZSM-5, the mono aromatics compound with the highest yield is 1, 3 Dimethyl benzene or mxylene.