HDO Performance of NiMo Catalyst
SBA-15 TEM image (Fig. 3c), it can be seen that active
phase is well dispersed on the support with the average
diameter of the mean particle size about 5 nm.
For the NiMo/SBA-15 catalyst, a high surface area of
SBA-15 leads to a better active phase dispersion, which can
be observed on TEM images and TPR profiles (Figs. 2, 3).
This result seems to indicate a higher GUA conversion
performance compared with NiMo/Al O and NiMo/CeO
2
2
3
3
.2 HDO Measurements
catalysts. Then, about 95 mol% of the products contained
no benzene ring, nearly 60 mol% of those contained no
oxygen and other 15 mol% of those contained only one
oxygen atom in their molecules. Moreover, well-dispersed
Ni can play a key role in GUA conversion and HDO per-
formance since the activity of Mo/SBA-15 catalyst is much
lower than NiMo/SBA-15 catalyst (Table 3). Only 7 % of
GUA is converted with Mo/SBA-15 and the main product
is phenol. As the result, Ni can take part in HDO activity as
proposed in other studies by increasing Mo dispersion [28,
32]. It can be further discussed about another possible
pathway that well-dispersed Ni, through its ring hydroge-
nation activity, create high yield of saturated oxygenate
compounds (Table 3) which were identified more reactive
for hydrogenolysis reaction [3]. This pathway can be found
in other study with the HDO reaction conducted with noble
metal type catalyst [30].
Table 3 shows catalytic activity tests of NiMo based cat-
alysts with GUA as feed at 250 °C, 5 MPa. In the blank
test without catalyst, no GUA conversion is observed under
the reaction conditions. The standard deviations of repeti-
tion are all below 10 %, indicating an acceptable repeat-
ability for HDO degree. The metal leaching was also
examined by ICP after 3 h of reaction time. Only trace
amounts of Mo and/or Ni (\100 ppm) are found in the
leaching solution. In all experiments, the gas obtained
contained mainly unreacted H , with minor amounts of
2
methane. Hence, comparison of the catalysts was based on
liquid products only. These products were homogeneous in
our experiments, and no phase separation was detected in
any sampling and analyzing processes.
Comparing to NiMo/Al O as reference catalyst, both
3
2
NiMo/CeO and NiMo/SBA-15 exhibit higher performances
2
As shown in Table 3, the ceria catalyst shows less coke
deposition in comparison with any other catalysts of this
in HDO reaction of GUA. Furthermore, NiMo/SBA-15 is
found as the most effective catalyst that gives more than 90 %
of GUA conversion and 67.5 % of HDO degree at 250 °C.
For the NiMo/Al O catalyst, liquid products contain
study. CeO -based materials have been widely used as an
2
oxygen storage material associated to the redox property of
Ce [33]. Therefore, the use of ceria as support can effec-
tively inhibit coke formation [34]. In addition, the con-
2
3
mainly 1,2-dimethoxybenzene (51.8 mol%) and main
deoxygenated product is phenol. Also, no saturated ring is
detected in the product. The high yield of phenol is
attributed to the reaction route proposed in literature with
NiMo and CoMo based catalysts [12, 30, 31], where the
GUA tranformation is found to initialize with the
demethylation (DME) and/or demethoxylation (DMO) step
to form catechol and/or phenol.
siderably lower acidity of Ni/CeO catalyst (results not
2
shown) may also suppress the coke deposition [35].
4 Conclusions
In this study, the influences of different supports, c-Al O ,
2
3
Compared to NiMo/Al O , the use of CeO as catalyst
2
CeO , and SBA-15, on NiMo based catalyst for bio-oil
2
3
2
support results in a slight increase in catalyst performance as
well as in products distribution despite its lower surface area
HDO reaction was investigated. It can be pointed out that
the beneficial effect of SBA-15 support for HDO perfor-
mance is associated with the high dispersion of NiMo.
NiMo/SBA-15 is a very promising catalyst for bio-oil HDO
reaction with its GUA conversion of 90 % and HDO
degree of 67.5 %. This catalyst also exhibits a significant
hydrogenation promotion effect that created a high yield of
cyclohexane and other saturated ring compounds. NiMo/
(
Table 2). 2-methoxycyclohexanol is detected with highest
yield (43.0 mol%) for NiMo/CeO2. Cyclohexanol
27.1 mol%) is observed as the highest deoxygenated product
(
aswell ascyclohexane isalsoobservedinthe product mixture.
Then,thehigheractivityofNiMo/CeO comparedwiththatof
2
NiMo/Al O can be attributed to the strong interaction
2
3
between Mo species and ceria even if this parameter should be
not the only one (Figs. 1, 2). Besides, the high yield of
CeO also shows benzene hydrogenation promotion effect
2
which enhanced formation of cyclohexane. As evidenced
from TPR studies, interaction of Mo and CeO2 which
creates a new active phase probably promoting its hydro-
genation acivity. The use of ceria as support also inhibits
the coke formation as compared with alumina or SBA-15
based catalysts.
2
-methoxycyclohexanol shows the benzene ring hydrogena-
tion promotion effect of the Ni supported on ceria catalyst.
This result is in accordance with the study of Barrault [29].
They have proposed the high hydrogenation activity of Ni–Ce
catalyst resulted from the synergy effect of Ni and Ce.
123