1 Proceedings of The 5 th Sriwijaya International Seminar on Energy and Environmental Science & Technology Palembang, Indonesia September 10-11, 2014 Preparation and Characterization NiMo/Zeolite Catalyst using Microwave Polyol Process Method for Synthesizing Renewable Diesel from Jathropa Oil Bambang Heru Susanto 1 , Mohammad Nasikin 1 , Sukirno 1 , Ahmad Faisal 1 , Mohamad Irfan 1* 1 Chemical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering University of Indonesia Kampus Baru Universitas Indonesia, Depok 16424, Indonesia *Corresponding Author: bambanghs@che.ui.ac.id ABSTRACT Biofuels have great potential to fulfill the energy needs of Indonesia. The process used is hydrodeoxygenation reaction (HDO) whose products are known as renewable diesel. This study focuses on preparation NiMo/Zeolite catalyst for synthesizing renewable diesel from jatropha oil. Preparation of NiMo/Zeolite catalyst is done by using microwave polyol process method. Microwave polyol method is a modification from incipient wetness method to overcome energy consumption and preparation time problem. Microwave polyol method is done by using a fast and uniform electric radiation from microwave as heating medium to dry catalyst. The catalyst result by using microwave polyol method gives the surface area of 5.45m 2 /g and has average crystal size of 62.98nm. NiMo/Zeolit catalyst used to synthesize renewable diesel at 375 o C, pressure 12 bar, catalyst loading 1% mass of Jathropa Oil and stirer speed 800 rpm. Based on the characterization results of GC-MS, the catalyst NiMo/Zeolit has conversion of jatropha oil 88,61% with renewable diesel product selectivity and yield are 35.26 and 21.5% respectively. According to result of FTIR and product physical properties, renewable diesel products have similar functional group and have better specifications than commercial diesel with density values: 0.833 gr/cm 3 , viscosity: 3.02 cst, cetane index: 61.01 Keywords : NiMo/Zeolit, Microwave polyol process, Renewable diesel 1. Introduction Biofuels has a good potential to fulfill energy needs in Indonesia as well as in the world. Biofuels are able to be alternative energy when the petroleum energy are depleted over time. Biodiesel is one of the biofuels which can be produced from trans esterification of triglyceride by using renewable resources such as jatropha oil. But, the product produced from that reaction still had several problem, such as high content of oxygen. High content of oxygen can lead to the decreasing heating value of fuel and makes the component of the car machine. To overcome this problem, we need to do a modification to reduce the oxygen content on the fuel, which can be done by using hydrodeoxygenation [1] to get a fuel which known as renewable diesel. Reaction formation of renewable diesel by using hydrodeoxygenation pathway involves a catalyst to decrease the activation energy of the reaction and increase the reaction selectivity. The proven catalyst having high selectivity for hydrodeoxygenation is NiMo. Boyas [2] in his study are able to synthesize renewable diesel by using NiMo/Al 2 O 3 to get n- octadecane with conversion 80%. Similar study is conducted by using NiMoCe/Al 2 O 3 are able to convert jatrohpa oil to be renewable diesel with conversion 88% [3]. It proves the activity of NiMo catalyst for the synthesis of renewable diesel. However, the active phase of the catalyst Ni and Mo itself does not have a large surface so that the reaction would be ineffective and inefficient due to not all of the active area can make contact with the reactants. Therefore, Ni and Mo metal component needs to be distributed on a surface of a solid support which has a large surface area such as zeolites [4]. This is also confirmed by research conducted by Susanto and Wiyo [5] which uses zeolite as Pd catalyst support which successfully providing large surface area and gives conversion up to 91.44%. NiMo catalyst preparation process generally is still using conventional techniques incipient-wetness method, where in this method takes up to 24 hours preparation and need high consumption of energy [2]. So, modification of the current method is needed to