A Study on In-situ Hydrothermal Hydrogenation and Decarboxylation of Oleic Acid over Cu-Ni/Al2O3 Catalysts

• 1、Key Laboratory of Biomass Chemical Engineering of Ministry of Education, College of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027
• 2、Department of Chemistry, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310028

Abstract：With the increasing global warming and the depletion of fossil resources, efficiently production of bio-fuel from the renewable lipids has become one of hot research fields. In this article, bimetallic Cu-Ni/Al2O3 with different Cu/Ni ratios were synthesized by a co-precipitation method for developing non-noble catalysts with highly catalytic effect on in-situ hydrogenation and decarboxylation of unsaturated fatty acid and establishing a low-cost technical route that efficient preparation of long-chains from lipids without hydrogen consumption. The catalysts were characterized with BET, XRD and TGA. Its catalytic effect and reuse performance for in-situ hydrogenation and decarboxylation of oleic acid were evaluated. The results indicated that the bimetallic Cu-Ni/Al2O3 exhibited higher activity than Cu/Al2O3 and Ni/Al2O3 for the in-situ hydrogenation and decarboxylation of oleic acid. The catalytic activity of Cu-Ni/Al2O3 with different Cu/Ni ratios was greatly different. 20% Cu-40% Ni/Al2O3 revealed the best results for the in-situ hydrogenation and decarboxylation of oleic acid, in which oleic acid and stearic acid were both completely converted and heptadecane mole yield was more than 90% at 330℃ after 1 h reaction. The reuse performance of the catalysts needs to be improved and the key is to enhence the hydrothermal stability of catalyst support.

Keywords： catalytic reaction engineering oleic acid bimetallic catalysts in-situ hydrogenation decarboxylation