Modern refinary, catalytic processes for biofuels and e-fuels manufacturing.

Revamping all “traditional refineries” into modern “green refineries” represents the challenging industrial strategy of the current energetic scenario, implying a greater use of different renewable bio-sources and e-H2 instead of fossil oil and of its derivatives. In fact, new strategies in the refining activities are currently being defined for a more sustainable fuel manufacturing (biofuels and e-fuels). On this address, catalytic hydrotreating, which is an alternative conversion technology of liquid biomass to biofuels is critical to addressing challenges refineries are facing today. Hydrotreating catalysts of interest for the refinery processes, like hydrocracking, isomerization and deoxygenation are usually based on transition metals, mainly Mo, W, Pt, Fe, Co, Ni, and Cu deposited on high surface area support, typically alumina or silica. Depending on the feedstock processed, several deactivation phenomena may occur during hydrotreating process, which lead to the loss of active sites and reduce the catalyst life and applicability especially when vegetable oils are run to obtain fuels for the automotive sector. On this account, adequate catalyst activity and stability are mandatory for developing new HDT processes, which require to be applied to different and complex bio-feedstock.Therefore, the goal of this research is the study of high-performance catalytic materials to be used in the synthesis fuels for sustainable mobility through green hydrogen processes and vegetable oil derivatives.