Renewable base oil from biomass-derived platform chemicals – step 1

The project ran between November 2018 and April 2019.

The project explored a proposed new value chain of base oils produced from forest and agricultural residues. The objectives of the project were to investigate and determine appropriate process conditions and catalysts for the synthetic steps and produce a hydrocarbon mixture of sufficiently high molecular weight and boiling point distribution.

Within the project, high molecular weight derivatives were synthesized from platform chemicals derived from hemicellulose. The derivatives formed stable suspensions in fossil carrier at ambient temperature and could further be co-hydrotreated using typical refinery catalysts in a batch process. The hydrogenation process proceeded without problem to afford a hydrocarbon mixture spreading over a wide boiling point range. The crude product was separated into fuel, light base oil and heavy base oil-type fractions by distillation.

The project was successful and meeting the overall objectives, thus verifying the hypothesis.

Participants

Nynas AB and RISE SPF.

Budget

The project’s budget was 800 000 SEK.