Production of low-aromatic light blending components by hydroprocessing of heavy biomass-based gasoline.

The number of internal combustion vehicles annually registered in Germany continues to outstrip that of electric cars, which will be continuingly dependent on fuel supplies. Those ambitious goals are disclosed by the European Green Deal, which not only calls for new technical approaches but also for greenhouse gas-neutral transition technologies. For the transportation sector, such bridging technologies are synthetic fuels, e.g., utilizing the bioliq^® process for a CO₂-neutral gasoline supply. To be used in existing engines, such fuels must be adapted to the applicable national standards. Hydroprocessing is a suitable process by which parameters can be variably adapted to requirements. In this work, we considered heavy aromatic-rich gasoline, separated from the product of the bioliq^® process by distillation. We investigated how to selectively modify the boiling behavior to make the product suitable as a high-quality blending component. Over a wide range of temperature and pressure, we utilized three commercially available Pt-supported catalysts. We were able to achieve high gasoline yields, while the content of low-end compounds up to a boiling temperature of 150 °C could be increased significantly. In contrast to the heavy character of the produced gasolines, the octane numbers obtained were in a satisfactory range. Especially the MON turned out unexpectedly high and showed a clear dependence on the iso-paraffin content. Thus, this study deals with improving the standard compliance of synthetic MtG and DtG fuels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]