Petroleum refining and process engineering is constantly changing. No new refineries are being built, but companies all over the world are still expanding or re-purposing huge percentages of their refineries every year, year after year. Rather than building entirely new plants, companies are spending billions of dollars in the research and development of new processes that can save time and money by being more efficient and environmentally safer. Biodesulfurization is one of those processes, and nowhere else it is covered more thoroughly or with more up-to-date research of the new advances than in this new volume from Wiley-Scrivener. Crude oil consists of hydrocarbons, along with other minerals and trace elements. Sulfur is the most abundant element after carbon and hydrogen, then comes after it nitrogen, and they usually concentrated in the higher boiling fractions of the crude oil. The presence of sulfur compounds causes the corrosion of refining facilities and catalysts poisoning. Moreover, the presence of nitrogen-compounds directly impacts the refining processes via; poisoning the cracking catalysts and inhibiting the hydrodesulfurization catalysts. In addition, both have bad impacts on the environment, throughout the sulfur and nitrogen oxide emissions. Removing this sulfur and nitrogen from the refining process protects equipment and the environment and creates a more efficient and cost-effective process. Besides the obvious benefits to biodesulfurization, there are new regulations in place within the industry with which companies will, over the next decade or longer, spend literally tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars to comply. Whether for the veteran engineer needing to update his or her library, the beginning engineer just learning about biodesulfurization, or even the student in a chemical engineering class, this outstanding new volume is a must-have. Especially it covers also the bioupgrading of crude oil and its fractions, biodenitrogenation technology and application of nanotechnology on both bio-desulfurization and denitrogenation technologies.

Catalytic hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) is considered to be the most promising route to upgrade pyrolysis oil to liquid transportation fuels. The objective of this research was to explore inexpensive supported metal oxides/metal phosphide catalysts for the upgrading of pyrolysis oil into advanced drop-in hydrocarbon liquid fuels by HDO. The first stage of this thesis project investigates a series of molybdenum oxides/phosphide catalysts on different supports that were prepared in-house, such as Al2O3, activated carbon (AC), MgAl2O4 and Mg6Al2(CO3)(OH)16. The HDO activity of these catalysts were investigated using a 100 mL bench-scale reactor operating at 300 °C with an initial hydrogen pressure of 50 bar for 3 h. The catalytic efficiency were compared with a commercially available Ru/C catalyst, and the most active catalyst was selected, i.e., MoP/AC. Two other transition metal phosphides Nickel and Cobalt were also prepared in the same manner using AC support, and their catalytic activities for HDO of pyrolysis oil were compared. The activities of the three catalysts were found to be in the order of NiP/AC> CoP/AC> MoP/AC.