Wood sulphate turpentine as a gasoline bio-component

Abstract The most recent technical development of gasoline engines has brought thermal efficiency close to the diesel engine. This will add pressure to develop new pure bio-based hydrocarbon components for gasoline beyond what ethanol only now offers. Crude wood turpentine (CST) comprises an oil mixture of volatile unsaturated C 10 H 16 terpene isomers derived from pitch. Early attempts to use crude sulphate turpentine as motor fuels after a simple filtration were unsuccessful, leading to fast contamination of the motor oil with metal sulphides and severe corrosion of engine parts. To be a suitable bio-component in motor fuels, crude sulphate turpentine must be purified at least from all its sulphur compounds. In addition, excessive chemical unsaturation is undesirable because of the resin formation on the inlet valve stems and the reduced shelf-life of the fuel. In this study a commercially available hydrodesulphurization and hydrodewaxing catalyst is used successfully to remove both sulphur compounds, double bonds and cleave the bridging C–C bond from CST terpenes in the single reaction phase. The process conditions appeared to be an effective means to control the product composition and its value as a gasoline bio-component. Relative severe HDS reaction conditions favour the high octane aromatics, and cut down the high boiling point heterocyclics. The shape of the distillation curves of both 5% and 10% blends are very similar to that of standard E 95 gasoline. The f.b.p.’s are around 200 °C, well under the limit of the EN 228 gasoline standard of 210 °C.