Int. J. Renew. Energy Dev. 2023, 12 (5), 923-929 |923 https://doi.org/10.14710/ijred.2023.54032 ISSN: 2252-4940/© 2023.The Author(s). Published by CBIORE Contents list available at IJRED website International Journal of Renewable Energy Development Journal homepage: https://ijred.undip.ac.id Computational prediction of green fuels from crude palm oil in fluid catalytic cracking riser Agus Prasetyo Nuryadi a* , Widodo Wahyu Purwanto b , Windi Susmayanti c , Himawan Sutriyanto a , Bralin Dwiratna a , Achmad Maswan a a Research Center for Energy Conversion and Conservation, National Research and Innovation Agency, South Tangerang, Indonesia b Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, 16424, Indonesia c Department of Chemistry, Pharmaceutical Sciences Programs, Faculty of Medicine, Sultan Agung Islamic of University, Semarang, Indonesia Abstract. Fluid catalytic cracking could convert crude palm oil into valuable green fuels to substitute fossil fuels. This study aimed to predict the phenomenon and green fuels yield in the industrial fluid catalytic cracking riser using computational fluid dynamics. A three-dimensional transient simulation using the Eulerian-Lagrangian with the multiphase particle-in-cell is to investigate reactive gas-particle hydrodynamics and the four-lump kinetic network model with the rare earth-Y catalyst for crude palm oil cracking behaviors. The study results show that the fluid and catalyst velocity profile increase in the middle of the riser reactor because the cracking reaction process that produces OLP and Gas products has a lighter molecular weight. The endothermic reaction causes the temperature profile to decrease because the heat of the reaction comes from the catalyst. This analysis shows that the simulation accurately predicts green fuel products from crude palm oil. As a result, the crude palm oil conversion, organic liquid product yield, and Gas yield correspond to 70 wt%, 28.8 wt%, and 27.5 wt%, respectively. Compared to the experimental study, the computational prediction of yield products showed good agreement and determined the optimal riser dimension. The methodology and results are guidelines for optimizing the FCC riser process using CPO. Keywords: CFD, CPO, Gas-particle, Green fuels, Riser, Rare earth-Y catalyst @ The author(s). Published by CBIORE. This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Received: 3 rd May 2023; Revised: 4 th August 2023; Accepted: 16 th August 2023; Available online: 23 rd August 2023 1. Introduction Fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) has been in commission for almost a century. Numerous advanced technologies have been adopted to meet changing market requirements and address obstacles arising from the need to refine progressively unprocessed petroleum (Sadeghbeigi, 2020). In the past few decades, there has been consistent advancement in FCC technology. This process breaks down the larger hydrocarbon molecules into smaller ones and producing valuable products (Miao et al., 2021; Otten-Weinschenker and Mönnigmann, 2022). The FCC has three main reactors, namely the riser, stripper, and regenerator, with the riser being the primary reactor where the catalytic cracking reaction occurs (Selalame et al., 2023). Liquid feed, preheated beforehand, is inserted through nozzles into the riser reactor to undergo an atomization process, creating fine droplets. These droplets then collide with a hot catalyst and undergo an endothermic reaction and evaporating (Sadeghbeigi, 2020; Du et al., 2022). The cracking process takes place over a length of approximately 3-4 meters and the process involves three phases: the particle/catalyst phase, the liquid/feedstock phase, and the gaseous phase from the reaction products. Once the process is complete, only two phases remain in the middle of the riser: the catalyst phase and * Corresponding author Email: agus130@brin.go.id (A.P. Nuryadi) a mixture of hydrocarbon vapor and steam (Zhong et al., 2022; Zhang et al., 2023). The FCC primarily employs VGO or fossil fuels as feedstock. However, there is now an opportunity to utilize CPO for producing green fuels through FCC. Green fuels, also referred to as renewable or alternative fuels, have significantly lower, or even zero, net carbon emissions. They not only offer a means to diversify our energy sources but also help reduce our reliance on finite fossil fuel resources (Cabrera-Jiménez et al., 2022; Grahn et al., 2022; Osman et al., 2022). Furthermore, Indonesia has potential because of produces the enormous amount of CPO in the world (Papilo et al., 2022). The Indonesian government aims to decrease the import of fossil fuels as part of its efforts to reduce the trade deficit. They plan to achieve this by producing green fuels, particularly by increasing the production of palm oil (Sugiyono et al., 2020). Several studies have described the conversion of biomass into green fuels through catalytic cracking. ZSM-5 and Y-Re-16 catalysts were used on Palm oil to produce organic liquid products (OLP), resulting in 12.1% of gasoline, 8.9% of kerosene, and 71.4% of diesel (Onlamnao, Phromphithak and Tippayawong, 2020). Drop-in green fuel processes using SO4 2- /TiO2-ZrO2 catalysts produces >50% green diesel, >32% biogasoline, and <11% heavy fraction, catalysts can be used based on the desired product (Zhang et al., 2020). The cracking Research Article