Diffusion of biomass
pyrolysis vapors and their upgraded products
is an essential catalytic property of zeolites during catalytic fast
pyrolysis and likely plays a critical role in the selectivity of these
catalysts. Characterizing the diffusivities of representative biofuel
molecules is critical to understand shape selectivity and interpret
product distribution. Yet, experimental measurements on the diffusivities
of oxygenated biofuel molecules at pyrolysis temperatures are very
limited in the literature. As an alternative approach, we conducted
MD simulations to measure the diffusion coefficients of several selected
molecules that are representative of biomass pyrolysis vapors, namely
water, methanol, glycolaldehyde, and toluene in H-ZSM-5 zeolite. The
results show the diffusion coefficients calculated via MD simulations
are consistent with available NMR measurements at room temperature. The effect of molecular weight and molecular
critical diameter on the diffusivity among the chosen model compounds
is also examined. Furthermore, we have characterized the diffusivities
of representative biofuel molecules, namely xylene isomers, in H-ZSM-5.
Our calculations determined that the ratio of the diffusion coefficients
for xylene isomers is p-xylene:o-xylene:m-xylene ≈ 83:3:1 at 700 K. Additionally,
our results also demonstrate the different diffusivity between p-xylene and toluene is due to the molecular orientations
when the molecules diffuse along the channels in H-ZSM-5 and provide
deep insight into the effect of molecular orientation on its diffusivity.