Catalytic hydrotreating of lignin

Abstract: One of the main challenge’s society faces today is climate change caused by CO2 due to the de-pendence on fossil fuels. To combat the increasing CO2 levels there is a need to develop renewable fuels. One such fuel could potentially be derived from lignin. In this thesis, lignin derived from a pulp and paper mill was first treated and cleaned. The lignin was then processed by catalytic hydroprocessing. By varying time as well as the amount of H2 within the decided central composite design, the future direction of further could be discovered. For each experiment there was a comparison test conducted (blank) without lignin conducted in order to examine the effect of the lignin. The resulting products were analysed by GC-Fid through compari-son to biodiesel as well as commercial gasoline. Afterwards mass balances were used to analyse the yields. The results of the experiments indicated that the set interval of parameters or equipment were not optimal for lignin. Since they resulted in a large amount of coke formation, especially in the cases of more severe treatment. For future research the results seem to point towards the use of higher content of H2 coupled with shorter reaction time. However, different catalysts, equipment setups as well as lower temperatures will need to be evalu-ated for lignin fuel optimization.