Continuous deoxygenation of concentrated stearic acid

Catalytic deoxygenation of concentrated stearic acid was studied at 300°C under 10 bar Ar or 5% H/Ar in a trickle bed reactor using mesoporous supported Pd/C beads as a catalyst. Stable catalyst performance giving about 15% conversion level of stearic acid was observed. The main liquid phase product was heptadecane. The main gaseous products were CO and CO. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the 8th World Congress of Chemical Engineering (Montreal, Quebec, Canada 8/23-27/2009).