Abstract:
The need of energy increases whilist oil reserve as a primary energy resource decreases, this is the reason why seek an alternative energy source is inevitable. Biomass especially palms oil empty fruit bunches (PEFB) which are abundant in Indonesia can be processed into bio-oil by catalytic cracking process. The objective of this research is to study the effect of the concentration of NH4NO3 for synthesis of HZSM-5 and used it as catalyst in catalytic cracking process of PEFB. The HZSM-5 was synthesized by ion exchange of the solution of NH4NO3 and ZSM-5 (Si / Al = 30) at 80oC for 12 hours. The product formed is then washed, dried and calcined at 500oC for 5 hours respectively. The HZSM-5 was characterized by BET to determine surface area and then is tested its performance in the catalytic cracking process of PEFB in 1000 ml stainless steel stirred batch slurry reactor at 300 oC. Bio-oil obtained was characterized of density, viscosity and flash point respectively. The largest surface area was found of the catalyst which exchanged in 0.5 M NH4NO3 concentration, which having surface area 79.32 m2/g. The largest yield of bio-oil was 66.4 %. The physical characterization of bio-oil were the density = 995 g/ml, viscosity = 14.3 cp and flash point = 48 oC respectively
