Transcripción del resumen del autor. Energy production from renewable feedstocks that would simultaneously solve ecological problems related to waste disposals would be very attractive. The present work is aimed at showing that atmospheric pressure thermal cracking of waste cooking oil in the presence of steam would be a potential option, particularly when the operating conditions direct the process either toward steam cracking or toward steam reforming in order to produce specific target bioenergy vectors: hydrogen, synthesis gas, or gaseous fuel. A commercial crude waste cooking oil (VEG) was selected as feed material. Using a bench-scale continuous flow tubular stainless steel reactor, experiments were conducted to study the final product distribution as a function of temperature, residence time of the feed material, extent of dilution, addition of a cracking initiator, and addition of a surface catalytic effect inhibitor. Several operating conditions of the VEG thermal cracking in the presence of steam were identified to meet the above-mentioned objectives. Particularly, when operating steam reforming at 800 °C with a very low steam-to-carbon ratio (less than 1), VEG was totally converted into synthesis gas in a hydrogen-to-carbon monoxide molar ratio close to 2 (favorable for low-temperature Fischer-Tropsch catalysis), with additional hydrogen and light-hydrocarbon (methane, ethylene, propylene) production reaching 40 and 27 mol %, respectively. Further investigations (conducted with the same equipment) confirmed the occurrence of strong reactor wall effects that led to the formation of coke deposits with catalytic activity during the VEG steam cracking and steam reforming.

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