Synthesis and activity evaluation of heterometallic nano oxides integrated ZSM-5 catalysts for palm oil cracking to produce biogasoline Mushtaq Ahmad a , Rafida Farhana a , Abdul Aziz Abdul Raman a,⇑ , Suresh K. Bhargava b a Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia b Advanced Materials and Industrial Chemistry Group, School of Applied Sciences, RMIT University, Melbourne 3001, Australia article info Article history: Received 7 December 2015 Received in revised form 18 April 2016 Accepted 20 April 2016 Available online 26 April 2016 Keywords: Biofuels Two-step process Taguchi method Zeolite Socony Mobile-5 zeolite abstract Biofuels produced from palm oil have shown great potential as a useful fossil fuel substitute and are environmental friendly. Utilization of palm oil as biofuel requires zeolite based catalytic technology that facilitates selective conversion of substrates to desired products, including biogasoline and biodiesel. However, the synthesis and integration of suitable zeolite based supported catalysts for the desired prod- ucts are the key challenges in biofuel production. The alternative to overcome these problems is to use nano heterometallic materials supported on zeolite catalysts. In this study, Zeolite Socony Mobile-5 (ZSM-5) based catalysts loaded with heterometallic nano oxides were synthesized. Next, the catalysts used for the palm oil cracking to produce biogasoline were characterized by field emission electron microscopy (FESEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and Brunauer, Emmett and Teller (BET) analysis. Taguchi method was used to assess and optimize the catalytic cracking process. The cat- alytic cracking results illustrated that under optimized conditions, ZSM-5 (30), Fe–Zn–Cu–ZSM-5 (31), Fe–Zn–Cu–ZSM-5 (32) and Fe–Zn–ZSM-5 (33) yielded 14%, 59%, 49% and 56% biogasoline, respectively. Higher efficiency of Fe–Zn–Cu–ZSM-5 (31) might be attributed to higher content of loaded metal oxides as compared to the other synthesized catalysts. The yield of biogasoline in this study, catalyzed by Fe–Zn–Cu–ZSM-5 (31), was 8% more than the literature values. Therefore, the present study proved that the newly developed Fe–Zn–Cu–ZSM-5 (31) was an efficient and economical catalyst for producing bio- gasoline from cracking of palm oil. Ó 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The available oil reservoirs of the world are depleting due to increasing demand of the fuels. On the other side, utilization of fos- sil fuels has caused severe environmental pollution through release of carbon oxides, sulphur and nitrogen that lead to greenhouse effects, and global warming. Therefore, there is a high demand for alternative energy resources to replace fossil fuels. Biofuels have been found to have a great potential as a fossil fuel substitute. Biofuels include gaseous fuels and liquid fuels, and usually pro- duced from renewable resources [1–4]. Gaseous biofuels such as methane and hydrogen, as well as liquid biofuels such as biogaso- line and biodiesel are primarily used by vehicles. In addition, they are also used for the production of electricity [1]. Biofuels can be produced from plant oil based feed stock (vegetable oils and palm oil), waste materials (agriculture, wood, and crop residue), aquatic biomass (algae, and water weed), energy crops (sugar, barley, wheat, etc., containing starch) and forest products (trees, shrubs and wood) [1,5–8]. Plant oil based feed stock mainly contains triglycerides, which can be easily reformed into liquid biofuels compared to other available biomass contain- ing cellulose and starch. Several countries such as Malaysia are producing a large amount of palm oil and have sustained concern in the use of palm oil and its other residues for the synthesis of bio- fuels. These fuels are environmental friendly and carbon neutral. Therefore, utilization of biofuels produced from palm oil can signif- icantly contribute to reduce the global warming [1,2,6,9]. Currently, several methods are available and more methods are being developed or modified to produce biofuels [5,10–14]. These methods include transesterification, fermentation, ecofining, ther- mal and catalytic cracking. Amongst all, catalytic cracking has sev- eral advantages compared to the others [15–17]. Higher yields of gasoline, kerosene and diesel fractions from non-edible and edible http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2016.04.069 0196-8904/Ó 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding author at: Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. E-mail address: azizraman@edu.um.my (A.A.A. Raman). Energy Conversion and Management 119 (2016) 352–360 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Energy Conversion and Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enconman