Korean J. Chem. Eng., 25(3), 426-430 (2008) SHORT COMMUNICATION 426 † To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: knduangk@kmitl.ac.th ‡ This paper was presented at the 11th Korea-Japan Symposium on Catatysis held at Seoul, Korea, May 21-24, 2007. Recovery of useful chemicals from oil palm shell-derived oil using zirconia supporting iron oxide catalysts Duangkamol Na-Ranong, Ratanaporn Yuangsawad, Teruoki Tago* and Takao Masuda † Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Ladkrabang, Bangkok 10520, Thailand *Division of Chemical Process Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Hokkaido University, N13 W8, Kita-ku, Sapporo 060-8628, Japan (Received 23 May 2007  accepted 18 July 2007) Abstract−The possibility for recovering methanol, acetic acid and phenol from oil palm shell-derived oil was inves- tigated. Thermal cracking mainly produced a solid residue and was not a suitable method for recovering these three target chemicals. When zirconia supporting iron based catalyst (Zr/FeOx, Zr-FeOx or Zr-Al-FeOx) was applied, the “others”--unidentified hydrocarbons--were satisfactorily removed without formation of a solid residue while these target compounds were considerably stable over these catalysts. Zr-Al-FeOx showed the highest activity for oxidation of the oil to CO 2 . Effect of operating parameters (steam to oil ratio, temperature and time factor) on its performance was fur- ther investigated. In order to gain insight into the reaction path, the reaction using model compounds (methanol, acetic acid, acetone, ethyl acetate and phenol) was performed. Key words: Biomass Utilization, Renewable Chemicals, Catalytic Cracking, Iron Oxide Catalyst, Oil Palm Shell INTRODUCTION Recently, energy consumption in South East Asia has continu- ously increased due to high economic growth rate. Limited fossil resources will not be enough for serving this demand in the near future. In Thailand, the process for production of biodiesel, as an alternative energy, from palm oil has been rapidly developed. Beside the massive production of palm oil, huge amount of biomass wastes are disposed from palm oil mills, approximately 12.7 million tons in 2003 [1]. This amount has continuously increased. Although these wastes have been mainly used for on-site energy production, the combustion with low energy efficiency causes air pollution. An al- ternative way for utilizing these excessive palm wastes should be, therefore, established rapidly. The solid wastes from palm oil mills are classified into shell (3.25%), fiber (11.79%), empty fruit bunch (51.36%) and kernel (33.6%). Shell, fiber and empty fruit bunch mainly consist of lignin, cellulose and hemi-cellulose. Thermochemical conversion, especially pyrolysis, of these three chemicals produces a liquid mixture of sev- eral valuable hydrocarbons (e.g., alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, car- boxylic acids, phenol and its derivatives) [2,3]. Acetic acid is an important raw material for chemical and petrochemical industries. Its applications are mainly in polymer and textile synthesis. Phenol is widely used in the production of plastic resins. Methanol is an important raw material in the chemical industry, and it can be used as a bio-fuel, feedstock in fuel cell application and production of gasoline. Thus, these palm wastes should be a promising chemical resource if a suitable process for recovery of these useful chemicals is economically established. In order to purify these target chemicals from the pyrolyzed liquid mixture, the unstable chemicals existing with only small amount and having closed physical and chemical properties should be removed in the early step. Our group previously reported that ZrO 2 supporting FeOOH shows high performance for recovery of phenol and acetone from the oil waste obtained from the production of activated carbon [4]. This catalyst was further improved and applied for ketone production from domestic sewage sludge-derived black water [5]. The activity of the catalyst was affected by its preparation method. The durabil- ity of the catalyst was successfully improved by loading Al 2 O 3 into the lattice of FeOx in the application for ketone production. The catalysts may be suitable for the recovery of our target chemicals from pyrolyzed liquid mixture obtained from the solid palm wastes. However, ZrO 2 and Al 2 O 3 themselves also have catalytic activity for several reactions with hydrocarbons [6,7]. Difference of com- positions and concentrations between the black water and oil palm shell-derived oil may result in undesired side reactions. It is worth- while to investigate the performance of the catalysts for the process using palm waste-derived oil as a feedstock. Among those solid wastes from palm oil mills, oil palm shell has the lowest water content. It was selected as a model for the inves- tigation in order to evaluate the possibility of the process for recov- ery of methanol, acetic acid and phenol. In this study, the oil palm shell was pyrolyzed to produce bio-oil under the condition giving the highest yield of a liquid mixture. The oil palm shell-derived oil was used as a feedstock in the reaction for recovering three target chemicals: methanol, acetic acid and phenol. The performance of several zirconia supporting iron based catalysts was examined. Ef- fects of operating parameters on the performance of the most active catalyst were further clarified.