Mo‐based ionic liquid as dispersive precursor for effective hydrodeoxygenation of stearic acid: Mechanism and kinetics

Abstract In the present work, the selective hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) performance of stearic acid over in situ MoS 2 catalysts produced from various Mo precursors was evaluated. Notably, the in situ MoS 2 catalyst generated from [N 8881 ] 2 MoO 4 —a Mo‐based ionic liquid (IL) with oil‐soluble property—achieves up to 99.9% of stearic acid conversion with the HDO product octadecane yield of 97.5% at 300°C, 8 MPa, and 6 h. The activity of [N 8881 ] 2 MoO 4 for catalyzing the selective HDO reaction is much better than commercial precursors like Mo(CO) 6 and (NH 4 ) 6 Mo 7 O 24 . The in situ MoS 2 catalysts were thoroughly characterized and analyzed to elucidate the experimental results. Moreover, the reaction pathway of stearic acid was proposed according to the product distribution, and the relative kinetic parameters were also calculated and discussed. The results indicate that applying Mo‐based IL as the precursor to generate in situ MoS 2 catalyst for the selective HDO of biolipids is highly interesting and desired.