Fast pyrolysis (FP) thermally decomposes biomass to produce precious oil precursors for fuels, chemicals, and carbon materials. Biomass-derived FP oils are chemically unstable, viscous, and corrosive due to their acidity, high water content, and oxygenated components, limiting their ability for long-term storage and leading to fouling from coke formation during upgrading with techniques such as hydrotreating. The work presented here is meant to reflect the use of a delayed coker to process FP bio-oils and highlights how intentionally coking FP oils produced bio-coke and stabilized FP coke oil, which can be further upgraded to battery-grade graphite and fuels such as sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). The addition of an iron catalyst during coking was also investigated, and both catalytic and non-catalytic delayed coking pathways revealed high-quality products. The oils produced from non-catalytic and catalytic coking were analyzed by KF, CHNO, stability testing (at 80°C), viscometer, GPC, GC-MS, FT-ICR MS, and NMR. Both coking methods decreased the amount of carbonyls and completely removed aldehydes, suggesting their highly reactive nature that significantly degrades oil quality. The iron-catalysis not only increased the yield by over 50% but also significantly enhanced the quality of coke oil. The coke oil derived from catalytic coking was further upgraded to fuels via hydrotreating, and the upgraded product showed a high yield to SAF. These findings will inspire further research and new ideas for pyrolysis oil processing, including catalysis and delayed coking, to produce high-quality renewable fuels.
