Upgrading/Deacidification of Bio-Oils by Liquid-Liquid Extraction Using Aqueous Methanol as a Solvent

Oxygenated compounds such as acids in bio-oils (BO) have been related to the corrosion of metals and their storage instability when applied as fuels. Therefore, upgrading BO by removing acids (deacidification) can be a valuable technique to reduce corrosivity using specific separation processes. Therefore, the objective of this paper was to evaluate the effect of the water content in the solvent (aqueous methanol), the carboxylic acid content in the BO and extraction temperature on the deacidification process by liquid-liquid extraction (LLE), as well as the effect of the same parameters on the quality of the deacidified BO through physical-chemical and GC-MS analyses. The results show that an increase in the water content (5 to 25%) in the solvent and an increase in the carboxylic acids content (24.38 to 51.56 mg KOH/g) in the BO reduce the solvent's capacity to extract carboxylic acids while increasing the temperature (25 to 35 degrees C) of the deacidification process promoted an increase in its capacity to remove them. Consequently, the highest deacidification efficiency (72.65%) is achieved with 5% water in methanol at 25 degrees C for BO1 (TAN = 24.38 mg KOH/g). Therefore, the deacidification process through LLE using aqueous methanol contributed significantly to BO upgrading.