The conversion of waste cooking oil (WCO) into renewable fuels has been proposed as a waste utilisation method which can ease global energy demand. The deoxygenation of WCO into fuel range hydrocarbons avoids the use of expensive hydrogen but comes at the cost of poor fuel properties and elevated reaction conditions. The use of bimetallic catalysts for the deoxygenation can improve catalyst performance and selectivity for alkane and alkene chains. The present work attempts to utilise the synergistic combination of nickel and cobalt catalysts to produce fuel with suitable carbon chain hydrocarbon composition. The experiments were carried out with monometallic Ni, Co and bimetallic NiCo all impregnated onto TiO2 without reduction. The deoxygenation parameters were set at 100 g feedstock, 5 wt% catalyst, 250 mL/min nitrogen flow at 100 rpm rotation for 2 h under atmospheric pressure. NiO catalyst showed the highest deoxygenation conversion, obtaining 89.03 % of deoxygenated product after reaction. Although Co3O4 catalyst showed relatively lower deoxygenation activity (52.01 %), the higher selectivity towards C10-C16 hydrocarbons highlighted its potential to be used as catalyst promoter. The use of bimetallic NiCo catalysts in a nitrogen atmosphere was found to be capable of producing hydrocarbons within a suitable carbon chain length for jet fuel use. Overall, the sequential impregnated NiCo is identified as the optimum catalyst as it showed good deoxygenation activity (78.78 %) with the highest selectivity towards C10-C16 hydrocarbons. The outcome of this study provides scientific insights on the deoxygenation of fuel range hydrocarbons under atmospheric pressure without the use of hydrogen.
