Study of the Stability of Pd/Al2O3/Al Monoliths in the Hydrogenation of Vegetable Oil

BOLDRINI D.; SANCHEZ J.; TONETTO G.; DAMIANI D.

Munich

Congreso; 15th International Congress on Catalysis; 2012

The hydrogenation of vegetable oils takes place in the presence of a catalyst, usually nickel, and the product is an oil of higher consistency, stability and oxidation resistance. These characteristics are required by the food production industry, and also in their use as biolubricants and alternative fuels. An alternative designed to simplify the oil hydrogenation process and reduce its costs is the use of monolithic catalysts. The use of these catalysts would allow to remove the filtration step, which is very interesting both from an economic and environmental point of view. The application of monolithic catalysts would make more affordable the use of noble metals that are more active than Ni. In a previous work we reported the study of a Pd/Al2O3/Al monolithic catalyst tested in the partial hydrogenation of sunflower oil, which was especially active, but showed a sharp decrease in activity in the successive uses. Since one of the advantages of monolithic catalysts is that they can overcome the difficulty to separate the powder catalyst from the liquid phase in the slurry reactor, the stability of the sample was carefully analyzed in the present work.