A Study on the Influence Factors of Catalytic Activity of Indonesian Clay by Multivariate Analysis

Abstract

In this study, the authors aimed to understand causal relationships between biomass gasification products yields and properties of clay catalysts based on results obtained by a lab-scale fluidized bed gasification of cellulose samples with nine types of clay particles collected in Indonesia. Factors affecting to the five products yields obtained by the experiments and the physical properties (11 types) of clay minerals were analyzed by a factor analysis to identify two common factors for experimental results and four common factors for clay properties. The correlation between the extracted factors for product yields and for clay properties was obtained by multiple regression analysis to show a good relationship between predicted and experimental data. A quantitative impact of each properties of clay catalysts to product yields was evaluated from correlation coefficients obtained by the multiple regression analysis. As comparisons of the impacts, specific surface area, potassium content and magnesium content had highest impact to produce gaseous species, on the other hand, weak acid content, total pore volume and average pore diameter had a highest impact to reduce tar production.