| Summary: | Bio-oil, as an alternative to fossil fuel, is unstable as it contains high levels of oxygenated compounds that affect the quality and stability, especially on the physicochemical properties and stability of its constituent components. Efforts to strengthen bio-oil need to be done to improve the quality and performance as biofuel. One of the most developed methods is hydro-deoxygenation (HDO). In this study, the effort to upgrade bio-oil via hydrodeoxygenation method was carried out by using bifunctional zeolite-based catalysts activated by various concentrations of mineral acids and Ni metal impregnation. HDO was carried out in a fixed-bed system reactor with 1:40 catalyst-to-bio-oil ratio at 250 °C for 2 h. Ni/B3 showed better performance among other catalysts in improving the quality of bio-oil—observed from high HHV (up to 21 MJ/kg), low water content (up to 13%), and a high degree of deoxygenation (88%). In addition, carboxylic acid as the main component of biooil had reduced significantly due to the occurrence of ketonization that produced ketones and decarboxylation, and released CO 2 gas. Meanwhile, the increase in phenol levels indicated the hydrogenation of methoxy phenol during HDO reaction.
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