Selective adsorption removal of carbonyl molecular foulants from real fast pyrolysis bio-oils

Abstract A novel sorbent-based separation process has been developed to selectively remove target molecules from the real fast pyrolysis (FP) pine bio-oils. Specifically, zeolitic molecular sieves and functionalized polymeric resins were found to effectively reduce carbonyl content and carboxylic acid number of a real pine fast pyrolysis bio-oils, therefore enhance bio-oil stability and preserve down-stream catalyst. Our results provide the first-time evidence on the potential effectiveness of sorption technology strategy for dealing with real FP bio-oils, reducing the carbonyl-rich FP oils from 7.5 mmol g−1 down to 4 mmol g−1 at 40 °C, which has potential to enable bio-oil stabilization and enhance operation stability for down-stream upgrading/hydrotreating processes.