Selective Catalytic Hydrogenation of Vegetable Oils on Lindlar Catalyst

Umberto Pasqual Laverdura; Leucio Rossi; Francesco Ferella; Claire Courson; Antonio Zarli; Rasha Alhajyoussef; Katia Gallucci

doi:10.1021/acsomega.0c02280

Selective Catalytic Hydrogenation of Vegetable Oils on Lindlar Catalyst

ACS Omega. 2020 Aug 28;5(36):22901-22913. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.0c02280. eCollection 2020 Sep 15.

Authors

Umberto Pasqual Laverdura^{1

2}, Leucio Rossi³, Francesco Ferella¹, Claire Courson², Antonio Zarli⁴, Rasha Alhajyoussef¹, Katia Gallucci¹

Affiliations

¹ Università degli studi dell'Aquila DIIIE, via G. Gronchi 18 Nucleo Industriale di Pile, 67100 L'Aquila, Italy.
² ICPEES, Université de Strasbourg, 25 rue Becquerel, 67087 Strasbourg Cedex 2, France.
³ Università degli studi dell'Aquila DSFC, via Vetoio, 67100 L'Aquila, Italy.
⁴ NextChem Srl, via di Vannina 88, 00156 Rome, Italy.

Abstract

Selective hydrogenation of vegetable oils is a significant step in the synthesis of several precursors for the preparation of bioplastics and biodiesel. In this work, a commercial Lindlar catalyst (palladium on calcium carbonate; poisoned with lead) was used as an efficient catalyst in the selective partial hydrogenation of canola and sunflower oils. Different operating conditions (pressure, temperature, and catalyst amount) were tested, and results were achieved by gas chromatography analysis of methyl esters obtained by the transesterification of the triglycerides. The optimized reaction conditions (0.4 MPa, 180 °C, 4 mg_catalyst/mL_oil) were determined for the hydrogenation of linoleic acid (C18:2) and linolenic acid (C18:3) with 84.6 and 90.1% of conversion, respectively, into 88.4% relative percentage of oleic acid (C18:1) with low formation of C18:0 (stearic), below 10%, with stability of the catalyst during several cycles with maximum C18:1 relative percentage ranging between 86.6 and 80.7%.