Browsing by Author "Rautalin, Tiina"
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- Tall oil naphta
Helsinki University of Technology | Master's thesis(2009) Rautalin, TiinaThis thesis was about using tall oil as raw material in naphta production. In this study tail oil naphta process was designed and investment costs were calculated. Also production costs of naphta were calculated. Tall oil contains oxygen which reduces the heat value of fuel. Oxygen is removed from the starting material via hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) reactions in hydrotreater, mainly as water. Since crude tall oil contains resin acids which tend to polymerize on HDO-catalyst, the raw material of the process is tall oil fatty acid (TOFA). Tall oil fatty acids contain metals which attach on the surface of the HDO-catalyst and make the catalyst less active and change its selectivity. This is why pretreatment section was designed for the process. In pretreatment process metals are removed from TOFA with citric acid wash. Tall oil fatty acids are corrosive and the carboxylic acid groups may react with each other in the HDO-reactor. To avoid these problems, tall oil fatty acids are esterified to less corrosive and less reactive tall oil methyl esters before hydrotreatment. Feed to the process is 40 000 t/a of tail oil fatty acids. The process produces 36 400 t/a naphta. Investment cost of the plant is 112 MEuros. Production cost of naphta (100 % capacity utilization) is 1015 Euros/t including annual production costs and annuity of the investment (10 a.15 %).