Malaysian Journal of Catalysis 7 (2023) 1-5 1 Production of Biokerosene Hydrocarbons using Coconut Oil with CoO- NiO/Kaolin Catalyst via Solvent-free and Inert Atmosphere Catalytic Deoxygenation Anis Athirah Mohd Azli 1 , Norazila Othman 1,2 *, Mohammad Nazri Mohd Jaafar 1 , Wan Zaidi Wan Omar 1 1 School of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia 2 UTM Aerolab, Institute of Vehicle System and Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia *Corresponding Author: norazilao@utm.my Article history: Received 27 December 2022 Accepted 29 March 2023 ABSTRACT Concerns on the depletion of fossil fuel and emissions of harmful gases lead to the search for alternative aviation fuel. The present study demonstrates the production of biokerosene hydrocarbons from coconut oil via solvent-free catalytic deoxygenation under inert Nitrogen (N2) atmosphere. The deoxygenated product is examined through Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis to determine its chemical composition and hydrocarbons distribution. CoO-NiO/Kaolin catalyst was used along with several other catalysts to study the reactivity of different catalysts in catalytic deoxygenation. Coconut oil is composed of middle-chain saturated fatty acids (capric acid, lauric acid, and myristic acid) which are favorable for the conversion into biokerosene hydrocarbons due to their carbon chain length. In terms of the types of catalyst, CoO-NiO/Kaolin proves to be the best catalyst with optimum selectivity of biokerosene hydrocarbons at 83.4%. A parametric study was executed on coconut oil using CoO- NiO/Kaolin, and the result indicated that the optimum reaction conditions are 330 °C, 2 hours of reaction time, and 5 wt.% of catalyst. The biokerosene hydrocarbons produced have the likelihood to be the drop- in substitutes for aviation fuel. © 2023 School of Chemical and Engineering, UTM. All rights reserved | eISSN 0128-2581 | 1. INTRODUCTION The aviation industry is a popular sector, and the world aircraft fleets are forecasted to be 33,070 aircraft in 2035 [1]. The aviation industry growth heightens fossil fuel consumption, leading to fossil fuel depletion. The industry’s rapid growth also exacerbated the climate change associated with greenhouse gas emissions from aviation fuel combustion. The emissions from both passenger and cargo carriages are reported to be 2.4% of the estimated 37.9 gigatons of total carbon dioxide emitted globally from fossil fuel use in 2018 and have increased over the years [2]. The CO2 emissions from commercial flights have increased 32% over the past five years from the 694 MMT emitted in 2013 [3]. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) have identified the development of biofuel as one of the four pillar strategies to combat the climate change problem [4]. The utilization of sustainable biofuel reduces lifecycle carbon dioxide emissions by 50% to 80% compared to petroleum fuel as reported by the US Department of Energy [3]. As an effort to mitigate the emissions of carbon dioxide, reduces carbon dioxide lifecycle, and overcome the depletion of fossil fuels, studies on alternative aviation fuel or also known as biokerosene are actively conducted globally. Kerosene type fuel is a standard worldwide aviation fuel for passenger and cargo aircrafts. It is made up of hydrocarbons with the carbon chain length between C6 and C15 derived between diesel and petrol from crude oil distillate. In search of sustainable biokerosene, various plant oil feedstocks consisting of triglycerides for the production of biokerosene have been studied by past researchers [5]– [18]. Triglyceride is composed of long-chain fatty acid esters that build up the chemical structure of vegetable oil and animal fats [19]. The carbon-hydrogen-oxygen bonded fatty acid structure is almost similar to the crude oil’s hydrocarbon chain content. There are several pathways for the conversion of plant oils into biofuel such as pyrolysis [13], transesterification [5], [8], [18], [20], [21], and hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) [17], [22]–[24]. The fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) obtained from transesterification method have several disadvantages such as high viscosity, high pour point, high acid number, low heat value, and low