摘要
It is already well known that availability of petroleum oil, as a world energy source, is running low. Much work has been done by experts to produce renewable energy, especially using vegetable oil as a raw material. Accordingly, this paper presents preparation and activity test of Cu catalyst using coconut shell activated carbon （AC） as a support, for conversion of n-pentanol and n-butanol to their alkenes as the first step of conversion of ethanol to biogasoline. This conversion is interesting due to any agriculture product containing sugar or starch can be converted to ethanol. Activated carbon was used as a catalyst support because this material is inert; hence, it would not yield unexpected side product, and pollution of environment with the used catalyst can be prevented because the used catalytic metal can easily be recovered. Results of the work showed that coconut shell carbon contained some metals, which disturbed in preparation catalyst by cation exchange process. Washing the carbon with ammonium acetate or HCI solution could reduce the metals content more compared to using water, with optimum concentration for ammonium acetate solution was 1.25 M. Application of Cu/AC in converting n-pentanol and n-butanol, based on qualitative analysis to the products using GLC, GC-MS, and FTIR, when n-pentanol and nitrogen gas were flowed into a reactor filled with Cu/AC catalyst, it could be converted to n-pentene with 200 ℃ as the optimal temperature. While when n-butanol and nitrogen gas were flowed into a reactor filled with more Cu/AC catalyst, the product was supposed to contain its aldehyde and butyl vinyl ether.
