Co-feeding of vacuum gas oil and pinewood-derived hydrogenated pyrolysis oils in a fluid catalytic cracking pilot plant to generate olefins and gasoline

Background: The Waste2Road project exploits new sustainable pathways to generate biogenic fuels from waste materials, deploying existing industrial scale processes. One such pathway is through pyrolysis of wood wastes. Methods: The hereby generated pyrolysis liquids were hydrogenated prior to co-feeding in a fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) pilot plant. So-called stabilized pyrolysis oil (SPO) underwent one mild hydrogenation step (max. 200 °C) whereas the stabilized and deoxygenated pyrolysis oil (SDPO) was produced in two steps, a mild one (maximum 250 °C) prior to a more severe process step (350 °C). These liquids were co-fed with vacuum gas oil (VGO) in an FCC pilot plant under varying riser temperatures (530 and 550 °C). The results of the produced hydrocarbon gases and gasoline were benchmarked to feeding pure VGO. Results: It was proven that co-feeding up to 10 wt% SPO and SDPO is feasible. However, further experiments are recommended for SPO due to operational instabilities originating from pipe clogging. SPO led to an increase in the hydrocarbon gas production from 45.0 to 46.3 wt% at 550 °C and no significant changes at 530 °C. SDPO led to a rise in gasoline yield at both riser temperatures. The highest amount of gasoline was produced when SDPO was co-fed at a 530 °C riser temperature, with values around 44.8 wt%. Co-feeding hydrogenated pyrolysis oils did not lead to a rise in sulfur content in the gasoline fractions. The highest values were around 18 ppm sulfur content. Instead, higher amounts of nitrogen were observed in the gasoline. Conclusions: SPO and SDPO proved to be valuable co-refining options which led to no significant decreases in product quality. Further experiments are encouraged to determine the maximum possible co-feeding rates. As a first step, 20-30 wt% for SPO are recommended, whereas for SDPO 100 wt% could be achievable.