Biodiesel Hydrodeoxygenation in the Presence of Catalysts Based on Precious Metals

Catalytic hydrodeoxygenation reaction of biodiesel fuel representing a mixture of fatty acid methyl esters has been studied aiming at obtaining linear alkanes. Precious metals (Ru, Rh, Pd, Ir, Pt), applied onto CeO2-ZrO2 binary oxide system were employed as catalysts. It has been demonstrated that these catalysts allow one to deoxygenate efficiently methyl esters of fatty acids at hydrogen pressure of 0.5 MPa within a wide temperature range (300-380 degrees C) with obtaining mainly heptadecane (C17H36). However, only in the presence of Rh and Ru catalysts the yield of alkanes is quantitative. The process of obtaining linear alkanes of C-14-C-18 series via this method is positioned as a stage of producing high-quality phytogenous kerosene fuel.