Synthesis of Cr/Al<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub>- Bentonite Nanocomposite as the Hydrocracking Catalyst of Castor Oil

Abstract

Synthesis and characterization of Cr/Al 2 O 3 -bentonite nanocomposite as a hydrocracking catalyst of castor oil have been conducted. The catalyst was prepared according to the following method. At the first step, bentonite was activated using H 2 SO 4 to obtain H-bentonite, after that the activated clay was pillarized by Al 2 O 3 , Next, a salt solution of Cr (NO 3 ) 3 ·9H 2 O was impregnated in the pillared bentonite sample, followed by calcination and reduction to obtain the final catalyst, i.e. Cr/Al 2 O 3 -bentonite. The catalysts including unpillared bentonite were characterized using infrared spectrometer (FT-IR), X-Ray diffractometer (XRD), X-ray Fluorescence spectrometer (XRF), Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) and gas sorption analyzer. GC-MS analysis was conducted to characterize the hydrocracking product. The research results showed that pillarization of bentonite caused an increasing of the basal spacing of bentonite in an amount of 1.01 nm. Although Chrom was unevenly dispersed on the bentonite and it probably blocked the bentonite framework resulted in the decrease of catalyst specific surface area, Cr/Al 2 O 3 -bentonite catalyst gave the best conversion of 64.03%. The GC-MS analysis data showed that the hydrocracking products contained various kinds of organic compounds such as acetone, acetic acid, methyl benzene, octane, heptanal, 2-octene, 1-undecanoic acid, 9-octadecenal and 10-undecenoic acid.