Engineering Commons^™

Phenol Deoxygenation Over Hydrotreating Catalysts, Madelyn R B Ball

Honors Theses and Capstones

Phenol deoxygenation has been investigated as a model reaction for the deoxygenation of fatty acid methyl esters in biodiesel. Hydrodeoxygenated biodiesel is a drop-in fuel for petroleum diesel, and is a premium diesel with a high cetane number. As the first step in this research, two molybdenum catalysts were prepared, characterized and tested in a small-scale reactor. These catalysts were found to produce small amounts of benzene and cyclohexanol in the product stream, and confirmed the activity of the catalyst. A commercial cobalt molybdenum catalyst (Harshaw HT-400) was also tested and benzene, cyclohexanol, and cyclohexane were identified as products. Future …