(695c) Renewable Tar Pitch Based on Pyrolysis Bio-Oils.

Over the years, fossil-based carbonaceous solids have decreased in quality, with respect to their use in industrial applications like aluminum smelting. Specifically, coal tar pitch is a binder material for smelting anodes. As the quality of coal has strayed from the norm, so has the supply of and critical properties of pitch, such as toluene insoluble (%TI), coking value, etc. Furthermore, a biobased alternative to coal tar pitch will certainly aid in reducing nonrenewable carbon emissions from the manufacturing industry. This talk will discuss an approach towards producing renewable tar pitch from pyrolysis oils. Partially deoxygenated pyrolysis oils underwent distillation, and the solid residues subsequently underwent extraction of toluene solubles. This soluble fraction underwent heat treatment steps to produce pitch with amenable coking values (>43 wt%) and toluene insoluble fractions (32 – 54 wt%). The toluene insoluble fractions of the residues were found to consist primarily of densely oxygenated compounds like levoglucosan.